Thomas Curran

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, so my upbringing was one of love and support, but also material lack.

We didn't have a great deal of money.

And one of my earliest memories of that is going to school with the wrong backpack or the wrong pencil case, the wrong brand of sneakers.

I didn't have gadgets like a Game Boy or a PlayStation.

Phones were just coming in then.

I didn't have one of those either.

And when I compared myself with these two characters, Kevin and Ian, who had all of those things and were able to express, I guess, their personalities and their identities with these material goods, you kind of feel like even though this is all stupid stuff, right?

It's just stuff.

But it really matters to a kid, especially if you don't have it.

So as I grew older and things like cars started to come into the picture, this kind of shame really started to get really into my bones.

And that was huge actually.

Cars was a massive part of this because cars is kind of the ultimate status symbol, right?

You just look at how they're advertised.

All my friends were bought these really super sleek cars with modifications and all the rest of it.

And that was like really crushing for me.

That was really embarrassing not to be able to have one too.

I didn't have the freedom that they had.

I couldn't go anywhere.

I just tagged along really in the back seat.