The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler - Dan Mancina - Dew Blind

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

My HoneyDew this week is Dan Mancina! Dan Highlights the Lowlights of being a blind, professional skater and pulls an exclusive trick you'll only catch on The Dew! SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE and watch full episodes of The Dew every toozdee! https://www.youtube.com/rsickler SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREON, The HoneyDew with Y’all, where I Highlight the Lowlights with Y’all! You now get audio and video of The HoneyDew a day early, ad-free at no additional cost! It’s only $5/month! Sign up for a year and get a month free! https://www.patreon.com/TheHoneyDew SPONSORS: GREEN CHEF Go to GreenChef.com/90honeydew and use code 90HONEYDEW to get $90 off including free shipping! SKILLSHARE Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com/HONEYDEW and get a free trial of Premium Membership. That’s Skillshare.com/HONEYDEW. KEEPS If you’re ready to take action and prevent hair loss, go to KEEPS.COM/HONEYDEW to receive your first month of treatment for free. That’s KEEPS.COM/HONEYDEW

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know I will be in Phoenix, the House of Comedy, September 16th through the 18th. And this episode of The Honeydew is brought to you by Green Chef, Skillshare, and Keeps. More on that later. Let's get into the do. The Honeydew with Ryan Sickler. Welcome back to the honeydew, y'all. We're over here doing it in the Nightpan Studios. I am Ryan Sickler, ryansickler.com. Ryan Sickler on all your social medias. Look, thank you right now.

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through it, hopefully, we get to do an episode together. It's five bucks a month. It's a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and if you sign up for a year, you get a month free. And you now get the Honeydew video and audio on Monday, ad-free, at no additional cost, on the Patreon. All right? That's going to run through 2021. Can't promise you what 2022 brings, but who could, right? You guys know I record here at the Santa Monica Music Center. If you need musical instruments or lessons for your kids, this is the spot.

They have online classes. Go to Santa Monica music center.com. Use the code honeydew the way of the registration free and you'll get your first free lesson. When you sign up for a package, get over to the online merch store. The night pants nation joggers are fucking fire. Uh, yeah, they're tapered at the bottom. Yeah. They got a back pocket. They're sick um and actually got some dates finally guys coming up going back out phoenix house of comedy

september 16th 17th and 18th i'll get those dates up on the website you can start getting tickets now very excited to get out more dates are coming, and that's that. All right. If you're new here, welcome to the show. And if you're not, you know what the fuck we do. We highlight the lowlights. These are the stories behind the storytellers. We're shining light on that darkness. All right?

And today, I'm very excited to have this guest. First time here. This is super exciting. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dan Mancini, y'all. Welcome to the Honeydew, Dan. Thanks, my dude. or dan dan all right dan yeah we can jump right in do you want to know how i wipe my ass or how what kind of porn i watch how i watch porn i want to know porn ass wiping dating all that but before we get into all of this everything and anything you'd like to promote please uh just follow instagram youtube everything's dan the mancina across the board yep and then uh incited with dan mancina podcast those are probably the major ways but

yeah same thing youtube instagram is the best well instagrams will us together. Thank you so fucking much for being here. I had no idea. Some fan out there, and I don't know who you were, but thank you. I'm in Mexico, and I see this message like, yo, this dude's a professional blind skater, and he's a fan of the Honeydew. You got to have him on. First of all, you know when people hit you up, you're like, this could be just some asshole fucking with me. So I look and I'm like, it does say the honey doing his interview. But then also me, like I never think anybody knows or gives a fuck about anything I do.

And I'm like, there's got to be another honeydew show out there. There's got to be. So I was like, you know what? I get a shitload of Instagram messages. Fuck it. I'm just going to message this guy. And then I'm thinking he's blind. What are you doing messaging the guy?

But whatever. I wonder how many times I've missed out on an opportunity because someone's like, I probably can't message him. Because we're the idiots. Yeah. I think about that all the time. Like, damn, how much should I message him? And I did. I thought about that.

I was like, maybe he's partially blind. I don't know how blind. You know what I mean? I get a that. I was like, maybe he's partially blind. I don't know how blind. You know what I mean? Yeah, I get a million messages that are like, are you really blind? Like, what's up? Are you really blind? Let me know. Tell me the truth.

Are you really blind? It's like, yeah, dude. This is it. So you messaged back. I'm talking to you. I talked to you right when I landed from Mexico at LAX. Yeah, I was stoked, dude. So thank you for being here.

I'm glad the internet brought something positive our way. And I'd love to talk to you about it because you are a blind professional skater. And I watch your fucking videos and you just make me feel like shit, bro. You make me feel like shit about myself. But you weren't born blind. Nope. All right. So take us through this because this is a –

We can jump into it. Yeah, it's a life story because it's a progression of losing your sight. Yeah. All right. So originally where are you from? Quick caveat though. I'm not – Tell me.

It's a very like nuance to skateboarding, but to be professional is – like i don't technically have my name on a board yet right it's like it'd probably be like is that what really makes you a pro at the comedy store or something like that's a pro but i yeah exactly but i don't have my name on that board yet you're not on the wall that's what i'm working i'm not there yet listen to me that's the goal i don't have my name on the comedy store wall. I'm a fucking professional comedian. Yeah. That does not define professional. I get paid to do what I do. There you go. Do you make a living doing what you do?

Are you happy doing what you do? You're a motherfucking professional. Yes. No wall. No logo. None of that defines us. All right. No.

Here's one question I do have. Does blindness, is it hereditary in your family? It is. That's the disease I have is a hereditary disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Okay, so you're originally from where? I'm from Michigan. All right, and whose side of the family does blindness run on? It comes from my mom's side, but nobody on her side that we know of actually had this disease.

Then how the hell does it come from her side? It gets passed down. It's linked to my X chromosome. Okay. So females can carry the disease, but they cannot be there. Some of them don't get affected by it. Do you have a sister? I don't.

I have three older brothers. Are they all blind as well? affected by it. Do you have a sister? I don't. I have three older brothers. Are they all blind as well? So my mom passing on one of her X chromosomes being a boy is a 50% chance that we would get it. So three out of

our four brothers have it. No. Yeah. Is that right? Yep. Who's the one that does it? He does it. He's got eyes like an eagle. He's got like better than 20-20 vision. I'm sorry. He he kills yeah he's just giving the middle finger to all you guys well fuck i mean it's he bears the weight you gotta do all the shit for me now so he's got vision yeah he's got yeah and the other is that like

the other two have vision too like they don't drive anymore but they actually have like decent residual vision like they can still read print and stuff like okay so this was a progressive thing obviously you're saying so um but your mom no no problems none of the ladies in her side of the family no problems because the other kids like her her sisters have one she has one son but he's not affected and then the other ones are all girls so because it's a 50-50. 50-50 with the boys. Who's the first? How old are your brothers? What's the age difference?

Oh, my God. They're all older. I'm the youngest of four. Okay, you're the baby. I'm the baby. So who's the one with the best vision? The first? Second.

Second got the best vision. Second oldest, yeah. So then your oldest brother is most likely the first person they see to start having vision problems just because of his age? No, I was actually. You were? Yeah. All right. So what happens when you start realizing that shit's changing?

I just went into like normal to get my glasses for the year. I had like basic stigmatism and these basic eye problems. And you're how old? I was 13. 13. and uh the how old i was 13 13 went to get my glasses for the year and then he noticed something was a little different uh and sent me to a specialist and i get passed around through a couple people and then eventually diagnosed like yeah you have this thing called rp and you're gonna slowly lose your vision throughout your life this is what you're told at 13 years old

and there's no you know there's no cure for it but he told told me, don't worry. By the time you get old, there's going to be a cure for it. So fast forward. What's he consider old? I mean, that's what every doctor says. Don't worry. Right. Don't worry. By the time you're 70, like, all right, well, what about between 20 and 50 years in between?

Nope. But now there is some stuff that's like starting to happen with like all right hold on okay that can help 13 years old we're just trying to fucking rock eighth grade here right now and you're told that you have this thing now is this when your mom finds out her family's had it or they always know they have yeah so this is when my mom finds out that she's a carrier of this uh not yet she just finds out that I have this. Okay. And it's all new.

She doesn't even know she's the one who's passed this. She has no idea. Nothing like that yet. And just, I mean, I'm 13. I don't give a shit. I'm just like living in my own world still. I'm doing my own thing. Skateboarding is the number one thing in my life.

I didn't really think about my vision loss or anything like that yet because it didn't affect me. It didn't actually have an effect on my day-to-day living. Maybe I might at nighttime is your vision that first starts to go. I might trip over something, but nothing that i think is an actual issue or anything like that and then what what begins to happen um so that's 13 that's 13 right so i'm just living life i'm cruising i'm skating uh barely graduate high school make my way into high school like i'm so you can see your vision from 13 through high school maintained i drove and everything okay now during that time or and your other two brothers are they starting to

have problems yet nothing and they're already older they don't even know they don't know they have it yet yeah the ones graduated uh we moved from east detroit like moved to a whole different city. Um, I mean, that's a whole story in itself, but yeah, nothing like vision wise, uh, not affecting anybody in my family. I think I might've stopped driving at night because that was probably right around. Was that when I lived? Oh no, no. Oh fuck man. No, not even yet. yet high school i was still good i could drive anytime at night and all that stuff and i moved to california and living in la you know i don't i didn't need a car yeah so i didn't really drive at all from like and you came here to skate i came here to skate and like chase that dream right i'm gonna be a pro skater so you were were you good in detroit by then is that why you made or is this where you because for me i moved

here and started comedy which is they say it's not the right thing to do because you're jumping into the fucking deep end instead of smaller market or whatever and then coming when you're when you're ready but your ego always tells you you're ready yeah a lot of parallels i think in comedy and skating for sure listen sein, Seinfeld said it. He talks about the skaters. You would think that Jerry Seinfeld would shit on skaters, you know, just the way. But he talks about how you guys, he's like, I see those skaters and I see them fucking work that same trick over and over and over until they get it. And then when they get it, they do it more and more and perfect it.

And that's a lot of the way, you know, we do comedy. We figure out what works and then it's working on how to make that great, you know? Yeah. And he's like, but plus that's life. That's what life is, is do it again and again and again. Yeah. And the whole like – at the time, I mean skating wasn't – when I grew up skating as like a little kid, like people really looked down on it, right? It was just like some stupid thing you do. Nowadays, it's like big, like Olympics and all this shit.

Oh, it's crazy. So it's like accepting, right? I've been to the X Games. It's insane. Yeah, yeah. It's grown and gotten bigger, but it's that same parallel with comedy. Like you tell somebody, like I'm going to become a professional skateboarder when you're a kid. They're like, yeah, right.

You know what I mean? I'm going to become a comedian. It's like, no, you're not. Yeah. Yeah. And it's still not real to them until they see something that makes it real. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so you head out on your own knowing you've got these vision problems.

You're out here by yourself? I moved out with three other dudes. But no family? No family, yeah. No family out here. 18, 19. Straight on my own. All right.

I got a job within two weeks right down in Santa Monica right here. We're going to have a surfskate snow shop and just having a blast. ZJ's, you said, right? ZJ's, yeah. Yeah, I know it. I'm about to take Dereks, yeah. Yeah, I know it. Yeah. I'm about to take Derek there, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, super good times, right? I'd skate to work, bomb a hill to work, skate home, skate the beach on my lunch break, and just like living that Cali dream. I mean, not making it within the skateboard world as like in a professional, in any way like that, right? Like just working within the skateboard world as like in a professional any in any way like that right like just working within the smaller industry um and i think it like he said like jumping in like he's into like a like the big market like that kind of fucked with me for sure and i it

turned me off on skateboarding i like saw the industry for like what it was i was complete outsider in michigan right you're just looking in and like seeing all these pros and like thinking this is like the most glorious fucking shit everyone's super cool and then you move here and you realize like oh it's actually a business too you know it's like it's not all fun and games and uh i don't want to talk too much shit because i i mean i love skateboarding in the industry but it turned me off coming from like that small that small town yeah and uh yeah man i got burnt out and i was bummed and then i fucking got my girlfriend pregnant yeah and so i

found it when i was 20 had Had it when I was 21. And, I mean, that fucking shifted my whole world. Okay, can I ask you, are you worried and do you find out if you're going to pass this gene on to your son? At this point, no. Okay. Vision loss is still there. At this point, I did stop driving at night. So you're 21. You're a dad in L.A.

How do your parents feel about that? Do they come out and meet your parents? Not stoked, yeah. I mean, my mom's fucking amazing. Not stoked. The youngest one gets his girlfriend pregnant. I'm fucking working at a skate shop, like living in a house with five other dudes. It's like your worst fear.

Look at this motherfucker. He just went across the country and got a girlfriend. Oh, my God. I think about that time, and I fucking – it stresses me out just thinking about it. It seems like a completely different life, and I was a completely different person which i don't know i asked my mom about that i was like when you when you had me do you see do you just do you think you were like a different person at that time she's like no it all just seems like yesterday but me it feels like i was a different person that was a different time i'm with you do you

feel that yeah fuck yeah i feel like every five years, I feel like I'm a different person and that was a different time. My daughter is six now and I'm like, look, man, I'm such an emotional guy. I'll get fucking teared up over a commercial, but then I'll be the first one to be like, who are we fighting? You know what I mean? I'm just that. And I'm looking at these videos the other night of my daughter when she's one. And I'm a single dad at that time with her. And I'm like, man, how the fuck?

Look how little she is. And I'm like, how in the fuck did we do potty training by ourselves? Everything. Every diaper, band-aid, bath, cut, meal, everything. All me. When I had her, you know, we have 50-50, but half the time, and her mom was already a parent, so she wasn't, this is kid number two to her, but it's kid number everything to me,

and I'm freaking out over, you know, I didn't know what the fuck Krupp was. I'm laying next to this little baby going, I'm like, what the fuck is that my what am i supposed to do you know but thank god for the internet thank god for the fucking internet um and i just got all emotional and i was crying and i i say this i was talking to christina pajitsky about this like there's times where i will literally look in the mirror and be like what the fuck are you doing get your shit together like i'll do self checks but rarely do i ever self-check positively it's always a negative it's never like hey man good job today good job

and i allowed myself to look at those videos in my phone and i just i cried and i was like good for you man we fucking did that we did the potty training on a flight i never broke i was like nope i'm not gonna just let you shit in this diaper on this flight we're going back to that bathroom stinking this fucking plane up we have to but we're not starting over so it was good yeah but it builds character it's not easy back then though right but now it's like holy shit yes forever ago right man but yeah a different time you and i were just talking outside and you said how long you've been doing this show and i'm like ah and then i was like oh holy shit we're coming up on two and a half years already like holy fuck yeah different time ago for sure yeah so you're a single dad oh

no you're not single excuse me you have a girlfriend but you guys aren't married or anything like that and um now you have a baby so what what happens next? I have a baby. I'm scrambling to figure out life pretty much at this point. Skateboarding takes a fucking backseat. Like, burnt out on it anyways, not stoked on it. I'm pretty much over skating. Figuring out, all right, I got to go back. I'm going to go back to school.

All right, my mom, she was the first one to go to college in her family, so education was everything. And I barely fucking passed high school. I found out, I think, two days before I was going to walk that I graduated. Damn. The one class. You weren't a good student or you just didn't give a shit? I was skateboarding, dude.

That's all I cared about. I didn't care about anything. I was like school's what. And where are you skating in Michigan? Are you street skating? Were there parks, ramps? I was skateboarding, dude. That's all I cared about. I didn't care about anything. I was like, school's what? And where are you skating in Michigan? Are you street skating? Were there parks, ramps? I'm a street skater. Yeah.

They built one park when I lived there at that time. That was a shitty park. And they changed all the rules halfway through. And everyone complains and fuck. All the neighbors hated it. Yeah. Kind of sucked. So I was straight street skating.

And then, yeah, where the fuck were we uh oh yeah i'm fucking all right i gotta go to school i gotta get my shit together and my mom says come move home to michigan and at the time the girl i was with was like all right i think i'm ready for a change too so we both move start going to school and like vision is still fine right still i don't drive at night but like we're chill like i still have my license i'm driving and all that can i ask you you don't drive at night as a conscious decision or have the doctor said hey it's not a good idea it's a conscious decision because what was happening your peripheral vision goes first with rp okay and your peripheral vision is actually your night vision that you use the most oh is that right yep okay um so once that goes now you're like just blinders on but

that night that's it's really bad yeah you can very limited and very limited sight like low light anything i would go into like a dark restaurant and then like you can't i can't read the menu and stuff like dude listen i have contacts but i have sight i can't fucking read the menu in these restaurants i'm i'm that dude my flashlight yeah fuck yeah i can't yeah that's some new bullshit i feel like too by the way that's some new bullshit everything's darker and let's sit everybody as close as they can so we get more people in there this this corona is gonna take care of that shit yeah yeah fuck that picnic vibe in a restaurant i'm paying 15 for a sandwich i want a table i'll eat picnic style at a crab feast man what the fuck

the first time uh i almost got into a fight because i was with my girl at the bar this is fast forward like years my my vision was almost gone but i wasn't carrying a cane around um and i i kept my girl was talking and it was loud as shit so i'd look over to the left like every time i would listen to her and apparently i was staring right at this dude and like after the 10th time i did it he like starts yelling like at me like hey what what the fuck are you looking at what do you what are you doing he comes up to fight me he's like you want to go outside you want to go outside i'm like whoa what the hell are you what are you talking about he's like you're staring at me you're staring at me and i'm just looking i'm like i'm i'm blind this is how i listen i was like i'm

blind dude and then all his friends catch on to what's going on they're like yo yo chill stop stop stop and fucking squashed the situation but he apologized he didn't he was a dick still really he still was like i don't give a shit oh dude he was still i don't know he had a chip on his shoulder that night i embarrassed myself one time with a blind lady on stage too man it was bad sagora and i back in the day we used to do these like uh our friend d bradette was a manager at the improvs and she would set up these like sunday benefit shows and it would be for your your little league team or you know we did crones colitis ms whatever the benefit was for it was like yeah all that bullshit you can't you know here's your range

of what you can talk about, whatever. And I'm always used to doing comedy at night, always. And inside, when you're in a room, like you don't know if it's day or night when you're – you just know. So there's a lady, an old lady too, and she's sitting in the audience and she's just doing the same thing. She's not moving and she's got her sunglasses on like why are you wearing your why are you wearing your sunglasses and i i i go hey you two and i was like you two hey too cool for school down here and and you can see the people around her sort of like uh-oh here we go but i didn't put it together and i'm like why are you wearing your sunglasses and she doesn't say anything and i'm like oh you don't want to say anything you just want to sit there and look cool also even if it in she could have been like oh i just forgot to

take them off because i forgot it's daytime outside yeah i forgot i always used to doing comedy at night so i'm like what the fuck would you even have sunglasses and then somebody in the group said she might not even been sure you're 100 talking to her at the point too she wasn't because to her they weren't sunglasses. Yeah. She's like, who's got the goddamn sunglasses on in here? Who's the idiot with sunglasses on? So somebody next to her just goes, she has to wear them.

That was the way they put it. I was like, oh, man. I'm the asshole here. All right. Put your foot in your mouth. She still had no idea until that lady said something. I was like, I didn't even consider blind. How how do you not that's like the universal symbol for blind i feel like no the cane is but the glasses are there and i didn't pick that but it's so out of our

our consciousness like blindness before i fucking got thrown into the world i had never met a blind person really i had never engaged with anybody with vision loss like i don't know like do you know anybody now like not anybody right i told you when we were kids um our neighbor the guy that lived in the yard uh like to the side of us his there we played with their kids and their dad had a um glass eye oh yeah and um you know we were always like what's it like? And he's like, oh, I'm not gonna. And then one day he did. He popped that fucking thing out.

I'm telling you, to this day, that image is burned in my head. That soft pink. And it was, oh, I was like, oh, God, you know, we ran over and shit. I was like, oh, he fucking took that eye out. My dad was laughing. He's like, you asked him? I was like, man, he's like, there you go. Right there. Freaks me out. Yeah, my left eye is fake and i feel like it freaks me out still it does yeah you do

have to take it in and out uh you don't have to clean it or what you got to clean the maintenance on a fake eye clean it as much as you can as much because it'll help it prevent from like breaking down do you all right okay i begged the doctor when i went in to get it i was like i want to give me a blue one i want one blue eye you really did i sat there for 30 minutes i tried to plead my case with this dude and he's like nope it's my integrity i can't do it and he wouldn't do it but aren't you supposed to do what the patient wants if it's not if it's not against what i thought it's not wouldn't be detrimental to your health in any way no but he's like he's like i can't do it because he said it was his, like, you know.

Who the fuck? Who's walking around going, oh, you know, is that Dr. Johnson's work right there? Who the fuck is doing that? Because there's only two dudes. It looks good, dude. It looks, yeah. I mean, besides the crossing and shit. I'm so self-conscious about it too.

I'm always like, I got my fucking eyes. Good. Your eyes are good. But it's fucking, you know, I mean, honestly,

if I guess you don't, you can't tell it's fake. No, fuck no. But you know, you can tell it's not working. It's just straight ahead. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you feel the muscle behind it? Can you move it? So I had, it's called, there's a couple of different ways to do it. Thank you so much for talking about this and letting me ask because I'm so curious about this shit. Yeah, I really, yeah, I don't give a shit. So you can, there's one way you take the whole eye out and then you have like this actual globe-y pop in and out. What's a globe-y?

You have a bigger sock, like the globe of your eye, the actual eyeball itself. And I had – is that – is it either evisceration or inoculation? The other way I had is where they just scoop out the inside of the eyeball. I don't like the scoop. What do you mean? That's the way the doctor says. They fucking cut it. They get open.

They scoop it out, and they put a ball in there pretty much, silicone or whatever in there, and then they cover it up so you still have some movement, right? The muscles are still attached to the eyeball you have, and then this is like a thicker lens that's on top of it. Oh, so that's not one unit right there no I can pop it on if you want me to do it bro hold on get a close up on this

can you really do it do it bro it's not a big deal oh shit oh shit so this is like a lens hold that up to the this camera so that's your fucking that's your ball all right oh my god see it's like not an actual globe right

okay so it's not a full circle i see what you're saying okay and then they like take a mold don't drop that they take a mold dude i was at hand i'll find it for you. Let me put this in. This is gross. I should go wash my hands. You should definitely. We're going to definitely wash your hands. We're also going to talk about that motherfucking thumb right there you're trying to put that guy. Shout out to Dr. Johnson. All right.

You want to go wash your hands? What the fucking. I'm fine. You want me to? No, I don't care. It's just, I mean. It's your eye, man. Yeah.

I hugged you when I met you, bro. Yeah. I can't even right now. It's kind of my eye. That's what I, when you told me that they were doing shots out of his eye, I thought you meant like my lens. No. Will Anderson on a crab feast.

It was a live episode from the Bridgetown Comedy Festival. He told a story about drinking with a guy that had a glass eye at the bar and he popped the eye out. And then he would lay on the bar and people would do like, you know, like belly button shots. They would do it out of his eye, tip it over and they do shots out of his eye socket. God damn. You just made history on the honeydew god cheat party trick but listen i still want a blue one there's a doctor around there give me a fucking blue one there's a doctor any doctor that will give dan a blue one please hit us up i will pass the information on he did say you're definitely gonna get stared at a lot more with a blue one please hit us up i will pass the information on he did say

you're definitely gonna get stared at a lot more with the blue one because people are gonna be like what the fuck we got a blue one they're gonna ask are you blind in the blue one they're gonna ask that's why i'm blind in both of them yeah that's why you wouldn't do he's like my job is to draw to draw people not to draw attention to your eye right okay that's respect that's his integrity but he's like i know a guy who does like fuck he does like the you see like cat eyeballs and shit i'm like yeah i'll go he's like the one of the best in michigan so i wouldn't know what um do you ever fuck with people do you ever take it out and just like leave it on a pillow or anything no i, I was. You gotta do that shit.

Next time I'm at a holiday and I'm set up a mint. Hey, I left my eye. Y'all see my eye around anyway. The only weird time was I was, I was with my son and my girlfriend. We're out to dinner and I'm rubbing my eye. There's like a certain way you push like down into the left and I'm rubbing my eye and the thing popped out and fucking ting, ting, ting.

Now, on the floor? On the table. We're outside in the left and i'm rubbing my eye and the thing popped out and fucking now on the floor on the table we're outside the restaurant and i'm like oh shit oh fuck and i just fucking grab it and i kind of just duck down i'm like i rolled out and i don't know i can't remember what my girl and my son says at your eye and there i'm like shut up because i want people looking you're trying to eat your fucking salad you look over and there's a dude popping his eye back and it's like what are you looking at i'm looking at this guy look for his eye right here on the table so i had to just duck down and pop it in oh my god dude yeah you gotta fuck with people with that you gotta just leave that shit on the counter, like, by your keys.

It grosses me out. I'm still getting used to it. Like, it grosses me out. How long have you had that? Fuck. A year. I think I'm going on three years, two years. Oh, it's about the same time I started the honeydew.

Look at that. New podcast, new eye. All right. Let's go. Let's go back to where we were. That surgery was the worst surgery I've ever had. When you were talking about how they were doing it. When they took your actual eye out.

Yeah, they scooped the fuck. You weren't asleep? No, I was out, but, and then I was like, I didn't, my girl, I didn't move for like two days. Like the house could have burnt down. I wasn't fucking moving. What is that pain? It's like, it's nerve pain, right? I've had fucking nerve pain before.

Fuck. In my legs. I mean, I went through all the Vicodin. I had to call again. They're like, we can't give you anymore. We can't give you anymore. So I had to get shit from a friend of a friend just to maintain my fucking thing.

You got a Dilaudid patch. Just a patch I can put over this motherfucker. It fucking sucked. I'll bet. And I'll have to do it again. I'll have to do it to the right eye oh you're gonna lose that eye too because it like it gets pain it got painful it gets small and their pressure builds up and i would just be in pain like my eye would just fucking throb

and i was like so this one's hanging in there all right i was i was fucking i was like fat real fat i got real fat like 238 pounds i'll bet there's so much depression and everything all right hold on we have to pause here and go back because we haven't got to i want to know where you first really start losing so you're in michigan when it when it all really starts to hit you that holy fuck i'm going blind yep i want to talk about like dude it was a i'll bet you future trip like a mother now they tell you not the future trip but i would you would have to on something like this how could you not it was i didn't worry about it i didn't i never stressed

about it until it actually started happening because you're you're 13 to 20 you're invincible whatever when i'm older when i'm 40 yeah there'd be some times like i remember a couple memories of like snowboarding in mammoth and like looking at the mountains and be like damn like thinking about there's probably one day i'm not gonna be able to see this soak it in right fuck some actual conscious ideas of like enjoy this yeah but few and far between and then fast forward to man my life fucking took a shitter at this point i started losing my sight uh the girl i was with and their son split up she took him left back to california went through fucking a year of custody battles didn't see my son for like a year oh when he was the most important fucking age like

two to three yeah fucking just got fat was going to the bar drinking pretty much like what i did was i fucking went back to what i lost when i had my son right like oh damn i can't go out anymore like i was 100 for my son at that point and then then she left. I'm going through all this shit. And I just fucking raged out and did fucking back to dumb shit. Right. But still going to school. I was going to school for aviation, aviation management. Is it? It's not what it sounds like.

I was like, I'm just just gonna work in the airport okay i'm not trying to be spirit spirit spirit would probably hire me as a fucking pilot you're gonna be a pilot you can you can probably walk on a legion airlines right now yeah my goal was i'm like i got these crazy fucking travel bills my son lives in california i'm gonna work in the airport i'm gonna get a deal work for an airline or something right so all this really is to get to be with your son without having to pay out the ass pay out the ass have a decent fucking job where i can live you're looking to hop on any flight for that fucking um employee fair yeah exactly that was kind of my little plan right so i fucking uh right i think i had like a semester left of school

and that's when my the most of my vision my left eye like pretty much overnight went away really you woke up and that shit was pretty much there was a big like pat it was like noticeable like what the fuck something's different you know and uh i was working fucking washing dishes at a fleming steakhouse back home and i was like i was like i can't even dude so oh man such good fucking meals and shit so good but uh fuck where was i you're you woke up pretty much and lost oh yeah woke up right big chunk of vision gone working when you say that what is that so what are you not seeing or is it like something's covering your eye yeah this is hard to explain because okay you don't see the vision that you've

lost right your field of vision it looks whole to me or it would look whole to you right because that's just what you see so that's your whole world you don't actually see like blackout spot or anything like that so it's just limited right uh so you'll be walking and you'll just like bump something out of nowhere but it's not like ah fuck man it's really hard to explain of what it's like to have that field loss. Like I said, the best way to say it is like you don't see the vision that you can't see, right? You don't notice a black spot.

What you see is just what you see. So – but this one was – I guess at first it kind of felt like almost like I was dizzy. Like my vision was just off. Like almost like my eyes were crossed and I was like, what, something's different. I can't tell. And went to the doctor and they're like,

yeah, like you've got this other thing called Coates disorder on top of the RP. Oh shit. Where like, they're immature blood vessels that leak in your eye and then the blood covers the retina

and you can't see. And there's no reversing that either. Fuck. So then I went through these fucking injections, right? In your eye? In your eye. God damn. You had needles in your eye?

Stick a needle in your eye. Fucking. Wait, do they numb you in any way? Is there a spray or anything? Here's what you do. You fucking. First time I'm terrified. I'm like, fuck, this is going to be intense.

Lay down. First, they give you like a bunch of numbing drops. Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. Like a bunch. Here's your little Kleenex. Dab that. And then we're going to do four rounds. They take a Q-tip with this other numbing shit.

And they tell me to like down and left or down and right. And they put that Q-tip on the spot where they're going to do the injection. And they numb it. And it burns for a second. And you're just fucking staring off uncomfortable four rounds of that and the doctor comes in and he puts that like that fucking uh what's that movie dude would they keep keep your eyeball open like this little plastic thing orange uh the fuck is it clockwork orange yeah thank you

it's like that he puts his little plastic thing in my eye look up look down plops it in there and look down and right

dumps a bunch of iodine in your eye does that burn or at this point you're numb a little bit because you're so numb it doesn't burn yet

you don't feel any of that yet but you taste it in the back you know you shit in the back of your throat and then he fucking goes and he dabs it once with a little dot of iodine, another dot.

And then he takes the needle and you feel like a little poke. And then fucking injects it. And like your whole eye just kind of goes whoosh, like washes over of like darkness. And it's like, oh, fucking pops it out real quick. What do they take? Are they injecting something or are they sampling? Yeah, they're injecting. It's called Avast and it's actually a cancer drug.

But it's supposed to suppress those blood vessels. So that that pressure buildup isn't so painful? So they're not leaking as much. Oh, not leaking over the red. To prevent that leaking from going on. Because they tried a surgery before that where they fucking peeled my eye and they tried to go in there and freeze the blood vessels. Fucked it up. What do you mean trying?

I don't like that trying either. Like experimenting on my fucking eyes. At this point and all the injections, I'm over it. Because you said this was the most painful surgery you've ever had. So how many surgeries have you had? A bunch of procedures on your eyes? Yeah, a bunch of – technically the injections are considered a surgery. But I had one other major surgery where they tried to freeze the blood vessels.

Fuck. And that fucking – that sucked. The injections were the worst because getting the shot wasn't bad. But once I left there and the shit started wearing off, I would have to keep my eye closed for a full day just because it was irritated, right? And that was the fucking decent vision in that eye. So I'm like – I'm feeling like a full day um just because it was like irritated right and like that was the fucking decent vision in that eye so i'm like i'm feeling like a bit we were in mexico i went jet skiing and i got i like a moron kept my contacts in well that salt water got my eyes i was blind i could not see driving back to the fucking thing they were just pouring water i was like here and i'm

over here like what a bitch i laid in bed the rest of the night just so i could get my and i was like oh my god i'm never gonna fucking see you again and then you hit me up then you hit me up i swear to god i couldn't see shit jeez dude man all right so you've you're losing your vision. You've lost your son. You've lost your girlfriend. I have no – You've gained 200 pounds – or not gained 200 pounds. I've gained 100-something pounds. 100-something pounds. The only thing I'm gaining is my weight.

That's the only thing you've gained. I'm having a good time with my friends. That's the one – I'm still all right. I'm still at least going to school and moving forward. Like that was my main, like always keep moving forward. Like my mom won't let me fucking slack. Right. I'm not going to be a complete piece of shit.

So. And what's your relationship like with your dad during all this? My real dad, my mom is fucking amazing. She raised four kids. Like they split up. My real dad's a cop cop a retired cop in fucking East Detroit kind of a dick but good fucking

I mean he's as good as he did fucking as good as he could do he has his regrets and stuff that's a whole other fucking story like we're still good though like we still fucking like I still bring my son and we i make it point to go see him and stuff when he's in michigan but stepdad though i have

a stepdad who's fucking super good dude uh my mom met him when we were really young too like still technically like they were splitting up with my dad's when they first kind of met but like complete opposite of my dad like my my real dad is fucking full-blown italian hot-blooded fucking drop of a hat he's gonna be pissed yell at you stepdad is like never smoked never hit a cigarette in his life never did a drug or anything um like electrical engineer fucking doesn't get angry his whole family they don't get like that weird it blows my mind i think that's weird yeah but the nicest sweetest people in the world you doing like everything's everything's aggressive like wow i'm just doing this my neighbors think i'm fucking i'll be outside skating just throwing my board and

yelling and they're like you're right over there yeah i'm fine fucking don't talk to me i'm just skating but it's just me you know that's fucking what that's what i'm used to i like to think passion is what is love and love and fucking anger combined right i have a little more anger mixed in with my i've man i love that that is great i agree i definitely have anger in my passion yeah i mean i get people like why are you yelling i'm like i'm not i'm just passionate about this i'm not yelling i believe in this it's bizarre though those two different worlds of like the mancina side you go to like a it's full italian you know christmas you walk downstairs and you can't even hear what the hell is going on because people are just yelling and screaming i miss that so good the smells and the stories yep everything's an insult like i love my i will never forget

i hadn't seen my one cousin jennifer like a few years i went back to baltimore she comes running up just gives me the biggest hug steps back and goes this shirt like i mean i haven't seen her in three years you know I hugged her again. I was like, goddamn, I love you. I went to Christmas once. My brother was grabbing my face and twisting and leaving all these red marks on my face. So I had this fucking hickey on my chin.

I show up to Christmas. It's Christmas Eve. Uncle Louie looks at me. What'd you do, slide into first base? You're like, I was just getting loved on. No, and then i thought i could never live that down for the rest of my life that's great yeah we're fun we're uh stepdad though so i was raised by my mother as a kid single mom and then my stepdad going later into life

all right so let's talk about your mom quickly now you're going through what you're going through what point does she start to find out she is the carrier yeah so this i had to think a bit um this is uh this is definitely when i moved back home and i think we separated this is when i kind of got actually some like blood work done to figure out what's going on um and they found out that it's this X-linked chromosome. It came from my mother. She just feels terrible? Yeah. She's fucking – feels that guilt, right? Sure.

How could you not? I gave this to you. Yeah, exactly. And she's like – I gave you life and took your sight. She's at the same time, though. She's fucking – I remember calling her complaining one time, and she just tells me, quit being a little bitch. Really? Good.

She raised four kids. She survived cancer once. She has done so much for all of us. Still helped support me throughout this whole time of losing my son. Flew with me all the time back and

forth between california and here like the strongest person i know right she's the reason why i fucking keep pushing like she's the reason why um but fuck she got stranded on a desert deserted island one time how how does anyone do that i wish she could fucking tell the story she tells it so good they went on a fucking cruise in the galap galapagos islands so these small ships and then you hop on a little skip or whatever and you pop over to these little islands so they're at this little island and the system they use is you leave your sandals on the dock and that means somebody's still here so she's there with my stepdad he's like i'm over i'm gonna go back i'm gonna take more photos of this fucking turtle or some shit my mom's like off taking photos like just on a reach of the boat

and then some fucking girl uh gets on the something happened where she grabbed my mom's sandals and brought them on a little boat. And she hears the fucking little boat take off. Your stepdad's not like, hey, my wife's not with me. This is a separate ride. So my stepdad was already back on the main ship or whatever.

And he's like, I'm going to go lay down. And my mom tells this to her. She's like, alright. She she pops over the hill sees the boat go away like watching it go away watching like maybe they'll come back no waiting waiting and in her head she's like all right brian my stepdad he's gonna take a nap he's gonna wake up shower he's gonna then he's gonna go downstairs and then he's gonna realize that nobody's here that my wife isn't on the boat still and that's exactly what happened he realized eventually and my mom was like pacing and it was getting dark and she could watch the main ship like go further and further away no and like getting smaller right before like she couldn't

see it you don't even know what's on this island yeah she's like well she said she was pacing left and right on the beach because she was getting eaten by fucking bugs. Oh. And eventually she sees the boat turn around and they came back and they got her. And they're riding back and they're like asking the dude. There's this guy and the girl like, does this happen all the time? And you look at the girl. She's like, no. And they're like, what?

And then you look at the dude. He's kind of just using the motor. He's like, sometimes. But made it back. But fucking that's my mom like strongest fucking woman i know but let's take a quick break and tell you about our first sponsor green chef green chef is the first usda certified organic meal kit company you can enjoy clean ingredients that you can trust they're seasonally sourced for peak freshness. Ingredients come pre-measured, perfectly portioned, and mostly prepped so you can spend less time stressing and more time enjoying delicious home-cooked meals.

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to receive your first month of treatment for free that's k-e-e-p-s.com slash honeydew now let's get back to the do god where were we i don't even know your mom's finding out about this she's carrying the guilt yeah she has that guilt um but at the same time, like I said, she's really strong. She's pushing me to like fighting for me to get all these services that are like there's any blind person or somebody going through vision loss. There's all these services that are free to you in the United States that can help you get training as far as using the cane, all these things. So she's helping me push and fight for these, because some of these things you gotta it's all this red tape and bureaucracy you gotta deal with. But guiding me right back on this right path.

It's the least you could do. I took your sight. She could at least get you on the right path. she gave me this deck of cards i got dealt all right wait you mentioned training with the cane so that was the big change in my life all right so i want to get to that so your mom now realizes oh my god i'm the carrier and then your brothers have to get tested as well to see if yeah they never did because they're they they're just like they've never even been no, they never did because they're They're just like, look, when the shit goes, we'll know. Yeah, they started

getting the fact. I think the one's been to the doctor. The other one hasn't even been to the doctor. They're just pushing it off. You know what I mean? Everyone deals with it differently. Sure. But Yeah, so I switch gears, right? I finished my little

fucking associate's degree at this community college, get my grades got a little better. They started slumping so what yeah so i switch gears right i've i finished my little fucking associates degree at this community college get my grades we got a little better they started slumping a little yeah that's my son fucking one i can imagine um and i'm like what can i do as a blind person like that's what i started asking myself like what can someone do just as a blind person as a career and i'm like my sister-in-law was a massage therapist i'm like i can maybe i can do massage so i go and i do massage fucking school for a year i complete this other little associate's degree and i work as a massage therapist for like a little chain uh massage like like massage place or whatever.

And, uh, and how's that? And it was, it was all right. Like it, it at least gave, it gave me more independence.

Like, okay, I'm like, I can actually accidentally hit a titty. I can work. No, I haven't, but I would have like,

I would have people like get completely naked in front of me and like sit down. Like I had girl oh this lady one time like working on just oh hang on she got up and i know she's naked like answered her phone like in the middle of the thing but like i know her tits are just out but i just can't fucking see him but i'm like that was weird i I just remember working. I remember giving massages like a few times and just thinking like, this is not me, right? This is not where I'm supposed to be. This is not what I'm supposed to be doing. I got to fucking make a change. But it at least was like a step, right? It was like always moving forward in some way.

So fucking still going to school. some way so fucking still going to school same time i went to uh uh to get my cane training for leader dogs for the blind they actually do the it's called onm orientation and mobility okay and that gave me like this huge boost of confidence and uh why getting my like i got to a point i went from uh driving i ran two red lights the second one i ran was kind of a main intersection i'm like i'm done did you get pulled over nope fucking i like underneath the light i look up i was like oh yeah that's fucking red and i was like i gotta stop i'm gonna kill me or somebody else hanging the keys up that day never drove again legally and then started how hard was that um it was one of the things they say for older people when they have to take the keys away that's just another piece of it it wasn't hard then but nowadays um i wish i had my i wish i

could fucking drive dude like come on elon musk give me a fucking driving self-driving car like let's go like if i get a car one day, that's my dream. Yeah. You'd be able to have my own car. You mean to drive it? To drive, have my own car. Because right now, I'm on everyone else's time. That's the shitty thing.

Yeah. Like, that shit wears on you. Like, number one, you're putting some strain on my relationship. Like, my girlfriend's fucking sitting outside right now in the car. She could come inside. Yeah, she's super awkward. She won't do it. She'll probably feel weird in here.

But you're putting that strain on people. And then Uber's fucking huge. Uber and Lyft was a game changer. Actually gave me independence back. This is what you don't think about. I never even realized how important Uber and Lyft and ride shares are for the blind community. Never even, god damn.

Embarrassed. I've never even thought what a... Did anything like that exist for the blind before other than the vans we would see and shit like that? Yeah, no. there's some uh some public it depends on where you live um there's some you know public like transportation the city i lived in does not have public transportation okay um so like la was nice

you know i'm on everyone else's time right even uber sucks i got a fucking order and i'm waiting and it's you know i'm paying 30 one way to go to these places right fucking wears on you but uh yeah i went from where was i i went from driving to riding my bike everywhere which was chill where i was at i was just kind of in my area going to school i stopped doing that vision kept going lost the left eye kept progressing right i started doing the same thing. Lost the majority of the vision in my right eye. And I got to the point where I couldn't leave my house and even walk around the block unless I was with somebody else. Because I didn't have that experience or knowledge of how to navigate.

Can I ask you this? If you remember, do you remember the last thing you actually saw um no no it's just that weird weird like progression like i had for many years when i started skating and i had this little chunk of vision in my right peripheral um and the best way to explain it would be like looking through like a really hazy fucking window screen okay looking through just a nasty screen right so like i couldn't see detail like i couldn't read i couldn't if you showed me a screen i could tell if that screen was on or off if If it was bright, I could see that light. But that's it. And now you told me we were outside that even standing in bright daylight on the beach or in a dark room, you couldn't tell the difference.

No difference. Yeah. Wow. Visually, there's no difference. From sight all the way to that. All the way to that. I'm watching you walk with this cane. I'm marveling at that.

Like I'm trying to help you not step in dog shit out there and stuck as a dog shit you know how many times i stepped in i believe it dude how many times i've i fucking reached down on a bench like what's this hey heather what is this oh that's pigeon shit you're picking up all right here's some things i want to know we're gonna i want to lighten it a little bit here and talk about some things i want you mentioned you want to know how i wipe my ass i do want to know how you wipe your ass yeah i want to know um you have a girlfriend who you had obviously when you had sight but i do want to ask you some questions about what if she was gone i want to know if anybody's ever ripped you off or you've caught them trying to rip you off and scam you because

you're blind like any fucking pieces of shit i want to know these things so um and then we're going to come back to some shit but how do you so how because i look i might get this wrong do not quote me on this but i'm pretty sure it was burt kreischer uh the segura told me this burt kreischer joke early on um and maybe maybe it was someone else and burt told it but the way i remember it was bert i'll have to ask him but he was at his show embarrassed himself with a blind person and um i guess he was fucking with this guy and he said to him he goes oh you're blind he goes hey how do you wipe your ass he goes because for me i i know i'm done when it goes brown to clear or to white or nothing brown red he said i know i'm done when it goes brown brown red i started laughing so horrible anyway

the way i remember that man has hemorrhoids he got got upset and he left. The guy left. And then one of his buddies came back. He's like, hey, it's not really you. Like, he just went blind. Oh, yeah. It was like he had sight and all of a sudden he's now blind. And he doesn't know how the fuck he's going to – you know what I mean? Like, you're asking him shit. He's over there probably been pondering the whole time.

So how do you know? How do you know i mean you it's everything you do actually you use this this rule of overdo it okay when i clean the fucking countertop after i cook you over i go an extra 10 extra couple feet to the left after cup treat to the right to make sure i get everything okay you wipe a couple extra and i use if i have a bidet now there you and i don't say dude yeah like game changer game change yeah i can't you shitting without it is fucking gross it is it's like i yeah we need to need to push that more you got tushy i do yeah they gave me one yeah they're the best yeah fucking amazing so um all right what about i know you have a girlfriend. If you were going to date, like I remember Ray, he would grab him around the wrist to see the size of the lady.

And I remember Earthquake is going to be like, it's in the wrist, Ray. It's in the wrist. Man, well, you cannot judge off a voice. That's not a thing. That's what I'm saying. Like if you're blind and you're going to meet a new person, you really have to love that person. That person. Yeah, yeah.

Forget about what they look like or any of that. You've got to love that. Fuck, that person's got to be great. Yep. It's been a change of like – I mean it's been a few years now of me living as a blind person and like slowly I lose these things that are important to the sighted world like like fucking oh my shirt has a stain on it like i don't fucking care like i don't give shit if my if i have holes in my shirt or whatever little stuff like that and then yeah like people man like a person's voice is really important to me now um it's hard as i'm i am a very visual learner um what do you mean by that like like when

i would drive i wouldn't memorize the street sign the names of the street i would know like oh i thought right that left that thing right that old broke down car yeah very visual especially names of people i have to see their face and now i'm fucking the worst at names like i'm bad i have to meet you a million times and most a lot of people's voices until i really hang out with you like a good handful of times i'm not gonna know your voice um so when people come up to me there's always like the 30 seconds of who the fuck is this i'm doing that with sight like either it's like yeah it's like does this person know me from skating and I don't actually know them?

Or is it like somebody, like fucking my close homie sometimes? Like, oh, it's Eric. I'm like, oh, it's fucking my close buddy. So that's weird. So I like people with really unique voices, you know, like your fucking laugh is fucking dead giveaway.

Oh, that's fine. How'd you find this show? How'd you even find this show? I heard you on whose podcast was it? It might have been one of the, maybe Tom Segura. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah, I think it was the Two Bears, One Cave one.

I think I heard you talking all kinds of crazy stories. Oh, when he was asking me about the hoes. Oh, yeah. All that. Like, yeah, the back of the good old days. Yeah, yeah. I was like, this was fucking hilarious. one i think i heard you talking all kinds of crazy stories about the hose oh yeah all that like yeah the back of the good old days yeah i was like this was fucking hilarious and uh yeah i think you mentioned your show on there and then i started looking in youtube and then i saw the joey coco diaz chronicles and i was like oh shit because i've been listening to him fucking joe rogan for years every time there's a coco Diaz episode. So can I ask you – I have two questions.

One, are you – how do you use your – is it Braille for the apps? Like what do you – No, it speaks. It just speaks. Is there a Braille keyboard on a phone? There's a Braille display where you can use it kind of like Braille. So like anything I touch on the screen it'll read to me it's like that's that's sickler ryan it's on the corner every time like where the address is oh okay so when i said

we're on a corner of such and such and such not you don't know where the fuck this place you look it up um but yeah so just anything you touch on the screen that speaks to you um and then there are like actual braille displays where you could hook up to your phone for like if you're searching the web and then it would actually give you like all of the written information in braille that would all pop up okay but they're like you know five five grand for like a braille display so can i ask you a question it might be sensitive sure i mean you did pop an eye out on this fucking show you don't get to watch what your son looks like, how he changes and grows into a man. Does that fuck with you?

No, because I thought about this a lot. And I thought about this a lot when my doctor, when I was going through all these surgeries and these shots, I'm like, I'm over it. I'm done. Like, this is like, we're just, I'd rather go blind now when I was going through all these surgeries and these shots, I'm like, I'm over it. I'm done. Like this is – like we're just – I'd rather go blind now when I'm younger than me go blind when I'm fucking 50. Why? Like that's going to be way harder to transition into fucking daily life. And he didn't understand.

He was like, don't you want to see your son? And at this point, I still – still couldn't really see his face anyways. I'm like, I don't have – we have all these senses, right? I can still experience the same emotions that you would get from seeing my son do something. I can experience the same emotions and have the same feelings through hearing him laugh a tell a joke for the first time or fucking accomplish something you know what i mean like you get the same feelings

and enjoyment out of life it just comes from from a different sense whether it be feel touch um it's all it's mainly audio you know auditory nowadays but is your hearing killer no it sucks i always thought like if you lost your sight yeah that's the other comment you're like no i got i got a better sense of smell now i like you use it more it doesn't get better it doesn't there's only there's only a certain limitation as to what a actual the actual body can hear right um some people are really good at using it those who are like born blind are really good at using like the echolocation you've probably seen that where people like they click that's the like like orcas and shit yeah like a real yeah but you click and that it's the same thing and it's actually the way you hear these little fucking hairs in your ear canal, right?

The cilia? Yeah, I think it's something like that. But it's like a feeling. You sense it. You don't actually hear something. I can tell. So if you click and there's a wall, you can feel it? I can feel that there's something in front of my face right now.

Yes. I'm not good enough to tell how far it is. You know Ash has been sitting next to you the whole time? I can smell them yeah see you got your lost sight i still don't have my sense of smell we're both sitting here handicapped oh you get the covid shit i don't want to compare yeah it's been five months now i still don't have smell wow yeah my girls are still mixed the way my daughter's hair smells and things like that so that's why i'm over here thinking about like man i missed the way her daughter's hair smells and things like that. So that's why I'm over here thinking about, like, man, I missed the way her hair smells and stuff. And, you know, I wonder about touching her face like that.

Yeah, no, no face touching. That's a fucking. Yeah. Even with your son, you don't do that. You don't sit there and mold. That's really weird. Nope. I mean, let me ask you. And I'm a bit different because i lost my sight later in life those who were born by like i said are really good with using echolocation they're

sharp with that shit i'm like i learned late in life you know i use it a bit when i'm skating to guide me like i'll have like uh and we haven't talked about skating that's what i want to get back and i'll use like a little beeper box i would be beep beep beep beep beep off in the distance and i would kind of give me like an orientation something's coming just where where i should head or where i shouldn't head right like maybe there's a pillar there or something all right i just have a million questions we're going to get the skating but um all right let's do a positive here a silver lining like of all the things there are out there for blind people um services whatever what's the coolest and then i want to know what's the shittiest thing that we as people

do that is like so disruptive and you're like why the fuck do we people do that it's uh i mean technology just itself has has made things so easier, like my phone, being able to instantly send an email, understand an email, getting to read print. Like back in the day, dude, before technology, you had to either read Braille or you weren't getting any information, right? Right. It's like being stuck fucking back before the printing press existed. Literally like we're controlled by what we can read and and get access to so access to information and knowledge is improved greatly um and then i mean for me the number one greatest thing i did was get that cane training uh getting my some independence right make that step to get independence back. And then, you know, now I fucking travel

to Japan and shit. All kinds of stuff. So, like, those are the two big things. What's the biggest pain in the ass? Biggest pain in the ass is the way people treat me. the, uh, um,

it's the everyday stuff. It's like the... I felt bad because bad because i was like hey we have a flight of stairs and you're like ryan i skate stairs it's not gonna be a problem but then joey diaz got a bum he's like i gotta go it's all it's all perspective yeah it's all your perspective so it's those little things man it's like being at the airport and being with my girl and the fucking tsa person being like can i see his id and like i'm instead of asking you he he is i i am he like fucking right here you say that sometimes if i'm in a mood like if i'm over it i'll fucking do it and like i get services to get me from like my gate to to the ride service area or something and like the one time i'm walking and i tell them right off the bat i'm like hey like i can just listen to your

voice i'll i'll follow you they're usually there with the wheelchair to like try to get me in a wheelchair it's like no i'm good i can walk and uh do you think that most people do come from the right place oh yeah yeah and that's why i hold my tongue 90 percent of the time because they you just don't know you know i mean and i i'm completely ignorant to all this there's sometimes when i'll bark back but that's it's rare few and far between um but like yeah i was getting the service one time going from the airport and like i i can hear the escalator and i told her at the beginning like i don't need an elevator like stairs are fine right and she's like and i hear the escalator we walk right told her at the beginning, like, I don't need an elevator. Like, stairs are fine, right? And she's like, and I hear the escalator.

We walk right past it. I know the airport like the back of my hand by this point. And I'm like, was that the escalator right there? Did we just pass it? She's like, yeah, we're going to the elevator. I'm like, no, no, like, I'm good. Like, I'll just use, I'll use the fucking stairs. Then she's sitting there right next to me like, oh my God, be careful, be careful, be careful.

It's like just walking onto the fucking escalator like a normal person would do and it's shit like that that fucking drives me nuts it's a little million little things that add up and and like fucking you know not know where my shoes are all those things fucking add up smashing my face on fucking something that's sticking out like in my house, like these weird corners and getting used to that and shit like that wears on me. You probably don't move a lot, huh? No, I do. You do? I don't use my cane in my house.

I don't mean physically move around. I mean move. Oh, move. Oh, yeah. Homes. Yeah, I just bought a house like end of last summer. So I'll be there for a while. So what have you installed in it to make your life easier?

Like because you now get to produce this instead of buy a house someone else. So what do you put in to make your life easier? It's always Braille dots and everything. Do you read Braille? Yeah, I can read Braille. I'm fucking really bad at it. Are you? Because I learned, you know, I learned in grad school.

I ended up going to school for vision rehabilitation therapy. So I finished my bachelor's in psychology and then got my master's degree in vision rehab teaching. So braille was a class in there. I understood a little bit of braille in the beginning, but that made me go through the actual whole fucking contracted braille. Grade two braille is what they call it. But that kind of shit throughout the house um labels like that and then it's small things it's organization is the big thing like fucking sugar goes here it has to go heather sugar goes here girl like that

where the fuck is the sugar at the sugar goes here i'm like a fucking psychopath now you have to be though that's fucking sick why aren't why aren't the towels folded bro yeah dude that shit drives me crazy you know that little stuff is hard but those are the main adaptions braille dots braille and uh there's other cool things like there's a little thing that you can put a label on and then you can like scan it and then it will read to you what it is as you, whatever you want to save it as. Oh really?

So you can be like, you know, when you have a thousand spices that have the same container, you can actually label them all like that. Yeah. See, I talk about one of my guys, she just hit me up today.

Um, my cousin Jennifer, same one that said that shirt, uh, same cousin. She, uh, she's almost completely deaf and i remember going to her apartment when i was home last time and she's like come here let me show you something and she's like lay on my bed and i lay on it and it vibrates i'm like well you know show me so i thought you showed me some kinky shit i'm like

yes exactly exactly and she's like no idiot, idiot, that's my doorbell. That's your doorbell. Yeah. You have that too? No, no. Yeah, it's her doorbell. She can't hear. Yep.

And I was like, ah. Vibration, or they'll have like a light. She's a single mom. They'll have a light that'll flash. Yeah, that kind of shit. Dude, that's terrible. There's people blind deaf. You know what I mean?

Yes. Like, imagine that shit. I know. That terrifies me because my hearing is shit. I'm like, is my fucking hearing going, dude? I don't know how people mean? Yes. Like, imagine that shit. I know. That terrifies me because my hearing is shit. I'm like, is my fucking hearing going, dude? I don't know how people navigate like that. Well, speaking of navigating, let's talk about skating. So you had hated it for a while, got out of it, gained a bunch of weight, depressed.

What got you back into it? Especially because you got sick of it when you could still see. Yep. So what got when uh into that man cane training helped excuse me cane training help more water no i'm good i have another bottle of alpha had to piss my pants in a second but i'll go uh and navigate into the bathroom's pain in the ass but i fucking so i yeah i do my cane training and this is a time when like i said i started noticing the difference in the way people treated me and talked to me

and these like uh actually here let me fill this water go ahead we need to pause edit this um they don't have to pause this i going to watch you do this again because last time you poured that motherfucker all the way to the top. And that wasn't a full bottle, so this one will probably... So I'll watch what you did there. You poured it against your finger first. I have my finger in here right now, and I can feel it when my finger hits my finger with my nasty eyeball thing. Listen, that is your cup to go anyway, and if it wasn't that motherfucker's going with you oh um okay skating when you're ready yeah so we don't cut that out this is the same time uh

there's actually a thing they make that has two prongs called a liquid level indicator that will beep or buzz or it will vibrate for those who can't hear. For the people who don't have fingers. For people who don't have fingers and don't have ears. Speaking of fingers, we're also getting to that thumb over there too. That's where we should have started the story. That was when I was seven. You can end on your thumb.

All right. when i was seven you can end on your thumb all right um yeah i'm getting pissed off at the way people are like treating me differently it's like driving me nuts so i started i made this i had the instagram where i started doing shit that you wouldn't expect a blind person to do so it'd be like throwing a bullseye for darts uh beer pong like i bounced one in and then sunk one right back to back like all these like little fun things right gained some traction it was cool and then i filmed uh i mean i hadn't thought about skateboarding for a while like i built a little bench that you would like grind right i built a little bench and i was like maybe i can fucking do a trick on this so i do it like a front board slide on it and then got reposted well hold on you're jumping all the way

to front board slides what was it like getting on a board for the first time without sight i mean that was that was the day that was the day that was the fucking day you went and did it that day that's the day i actually skated again yeah no shit and you were doing tricks already by like muscle memory and feel yeah just must i mean yeah i was but that's what it is when you repeat something a million fucking times you can do it with your eyes closed yeah yeah and escape it's like that it's like riding a bike there's some things at the you got to the level that i got to which i was you know i was a decent fucking skateboarder like i would jump on handrails, right. And like jump down, like,

you know, decent, like nine stairs, 11 stairs, like the biggest set I jumped down. Um, so like I was decent at that level. So like doing this basic front board side, isn't really like that big of a deal. And I took it to, uh, uh, a tennis court and this one, I had that little bit of vision right so i would put the box on like the white lines of the tennis court which had really good contrast from like it was like a red court and then the white would like pop so i could look off to like the left and i could see that line and use that as a guide and then use my cane to find the box i love i watch you skate with a cane dude, and at this time I was still using

that little bit of vision, right? And like, be able to find, it could get me to an obstacle. And that gained like a little bit of traction,

like people were stoked. I got shared like through my buddy through the Tony Hawk Foundation. And like, I was like, oh, that's cool. Like maybe I should,

let's see like what else I could do like I didn't think I would ever get the satisfaction out of it that I did as a kid right I'm like there's no way I'm going to be able to like progress and like actually enjoy it and have a good time but I kind of just slowly started skating more just to make these little videos and then I'm like damn I kind of want to film like another full-length skate part um and that became like my new goal uh because it was i mean it's so weird it would be like stopping comedy for you right like it's fucking every as a kid it's everything i thought about and ever did um and like i always thought that no matter what if i go blind i'm

still gonna skate and then just fucking life fucking hit me the blindness hit me and i was like fuck skateboarding's done like i remember physically i remember mentally making the change in my brain of like yep yep, skateboarding is done. Like I had like an old photo of me skating. I mean, look at that frame. That's kind of cool. Like put it completely behind me and then fucking somehow fast forward to now. It's like I found a way.

I actually, I guess what changed was I was actually able to like progress and like actually learn new tricks. And then it became fun to me. And then it became like, oh, this is a challenge of, damn, how far can I take this? And then it was fucking getting hooked up with Real, the board company I ride for, meeting Jim, who's one of the owners of Real. company i ride for uh meeting jim who's one of the owners are real uh and then meeting paul paul shire who's uh the main the main tm for adidas damn and then like having these opportunities right where i'm like oh damn like all right i'm enjoying this i'm progressing i know for a fact that i haven't even fucking hit the tip of the fucking iceberg yet as far as how far I can push it. I'm going to fucking go for this.

And that was kind of a scary time because I was going to grad school for VRT and I had to make the decision of – skateboarding was really picking up. I started getting some sponsors. I started getting some sponsors. I started getting some actual money, right? I don't mean to interrupt, but again, you said in order to technically be professional, your name has to be on a board. That's what pro is in skating? It has to be on a board from a legitimate skateboard company. I didn't know. I just thought pro was if you got paid, you were pro or any kind of sponsor.

Back in the 80s, it was like if you entered a contest as pro and you're getting paid, you were pro. But it's become this weird stigma or like just badge of honor. That's become really important within the skateboard culture of like, damn, he made it. Now it's like they do this huge party. They'll throw a huge party. They'll surprise you with your with your fucking what the fuck are they waiting on to put your name on a board what do you got i'm in this weird dude it's i fucking am somehow listen when your name gets on a board can i please get a board of course yeah i can send you one we i'm in this really weird gray area i don't fucking belong somehow i snuck my way back in the skate industry you're a

honeydew bro and i fucking honeydewed my way in yeah i don't even i somehow i snuck my way back in the skate industry you're a honeydew bro and i fucking honeydewed my way in yeah i don't even i it blows my mind that that i am where i am and then i've had these opportunities uh because that's how i feel every fucking it's insane like as a kid like this i'm living literally my childhood i try to check myself on that too and say look man if you'd have told 16 year old you that this shit was gonna go but it's gonna be 30 years it's gonna be 30 years and you're gonna have to go through some shit and then if you make it through three decades from now and my buddy said that the other day he's like well dude you fucking you know you you handled like you made it through your blindness

and you figured it out and that and that's why you're at where you're at you know what i mean like i was like yeah i guess i deserve it somewhat but i still you know you don't feel like you ever deserve no i never feel like i deserve anything i know i need to feel more of that and accepting too yeah it's weird but um fuck where was i so like yeah getting getting aligned with these companies and then like realizing like i said like all right i got a long way to go like i know i can progress oh i'm in this weird gray area of uh the the board company real that i ride for they did a braille board like a raised braille graphic and that was to raise money for this foundation that I started called Keep Pushing. I'm raising money to build a fully adaptive skate park that has everything you need to use all of your other senses other than sight.

Promote the links right now. Do all that, please. Fucking DM me at my Dan the Mancina. I'm just setting up all of the shit to take in all the funds. You can use Venmo. You can fucking go through PayPal right now. Will you send me a link? I'd like to contribute to that.

Yeah, that'd be sick. Hell yeah. Thank you. Yeah, and then I'm going to build this park, and then I'm going to fly in kids and families with kids with visual impairments. And it's going to be on my flag. I bought this piece of chunk of land right next to my home. And they're going to be able to come stay with me.

And then I can teach them everything. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, I'm going to teach everything from everything I learned as a VR team in school. Are these all kids or blind kids? I think I'm going to start with blind kids. And then it's fucking wheelchairs, whatever. It's going to be like this full accessible park. Speaking of wheelchairs, this is what I'm saying.

I have these moments of feeling like, know about my own bullshit but yesterday or two days ago i watched two guys in fucking wheelchairs go down the x games ramp one guy flipped forward and landed it's my man aaron is it wheels yeah he flipped forward and landed the shit i'm like isn't the rest of your upper body can Can you paralyze that? No, it hurts him to do that shit. I guarantee that hurts. It hurts. Just because you can't use your legs, you don't feel that impact.

I watched the way his neck came down and everything, and I was like, fuck, he's going to paralyze his whole body. I know, dude. And is it the same guy that I saw then do the backflip, or is there a couple guys? There can't be many dudes out there doing that. He's, he's the only one. Um, it was sick.

There's a girl who's actually done a backflip on a wheelchair, but he's the fucking dude. He's the one. When I go to these adaptive Scott contests, I can't fucking beat him. His fucking ass. He does backflips on the fucking wheelchair. Like I can't compete with that shit.

I tell him every time I'm going to learn how to backflip motherfucker. And I'm taking your ass. He wears a helmet. Yeah. Um, are there any other blind learn how to backflip, motherfucker, and I'm taking your ass out. Who cares? He wears a helmet and the balls ass. Are there any other blind skaters out there? Yeah, dude. There's fucking – there's one who grew up like 20 minutes from me who lost his sight. He got an infection. I think it was a fucking MRSA or some shit.

A staph infection. Ended up going into septic shock and like fucking lost his sight. Woke up fucking blind and like 90 pounds. Made his way back to the board and fucking Nick Mullins. You can check him out. He fucking kills it. He's so good at skating. And then Justin Bishop.

He just came out with another skate part. He's actually killing it. I love that you're giving back. I love that you're giving back. They fucking kill it. like that's my goal is to help like our push is to get it in paralympics 2028 i'll be you're gonna compete that's well we're we're trying to get it in the paralympics so that i can't i'll be fucking 41 but i'm gonna fucking try to compete why should there be an age for skating it's a young man's

game everything's so's comedy yeah it's all young everything's a young yeah's game. Everything is. So is comedy. Yeah. It's all a young man. Everything's a young man's game. Yeah. I mean, I fucking believe me. I know, hey, there's a chance. I'm going to go for it for sure. Yeah. But right now, it's all in the process, right? I'm on like a committee for like the USA Skateboarding Adaptive Sports Committee, and we're pushing to do that.

We're having the first Dew Tour. You ever heard of Dew Tour? Yeah. Big fucking skate contest. Yeah. They're having their first Dew Tour is like you ever heard of Dew Tour big fucking skate contest they're having their first adaptive street street contest so you can watch me

I think I don't know if they're gonna televise the adaptive where is it gonna be it's in Des Moines it's in I think we skate the 24th so I'll be there

I'll be in fucking was it Iowa right yeah Des Moines, Iowa this is heaven no it's Iowa that's right yeah so you can fucking watch me skate there Yeah, Des Moines, Iowa. Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa.

That's right. Yeah, you can fucking watch me skate there, so that'll be fucking really dope. But shit's picking up. There's a bunch of other blind skaters. We don't have our own division. I got to compete against fucking back-flipping Aaron. But it's all good, man. Nobody's going to beat that guy.

No offense. Nobody's going to beat Aaron. Unless you do a goddamn McTwist or some shit. Nobody's going to beat that guy. No offense. Nobody's going to beat Aaron. And he's been, I mean. Unless you do a goddamn McTwist or some shit. He's been doing it. That shit was insane. It's insane, dude. That mega ramp. I watched him rock back.

And then I was like, what is he doing? And then he went four. And I was like, get the fuck out. I watched like 10 times. He's insane. He did like a 360 backflip. On the mega ramp. It's incredible.

He tried to do the loop, you know that loop thing? Yeah, the hot wheels thing that everyone's doing now. Yeah, he tried to do that all the way around. He couldn't get the speed. The ramp wasn't big enough. Because he has little wheels in the front that fucking wobble. He can't maintain his speed. He fucking fell and landed on his head and shit.

He's like, all right, I got it. Either they got to build a bigger ramp or not. Does it have to be bigger or smaller? It's got to be bigger. Bigger. Maybe you could do a smaller circle. I feel like the smaller circle, he could probably get more. Yeah, you might be able to get around.

Zip around that bitch. Yeah, that's true. What do I know? But he's, yeah, he's fucking, I can't say enough good things about that dude. Dan, I can't say enough good things about you, dude. This has been a fucking amazing. This is one of my favorite episodes. I have to say, man say man you're you're incredible um thank you for coming on something i ask all guests who come on for the first time is advice they give to their 16 year old self so i'm curious

to hear what you would say because at that point you've already been told you're gonna lose sight 16 man i would uh i'd say don't change a thing because at that time i was like the freest you know i worry about so much shit you know like just life and like at that age dude you know i was the most free-spirited carefree person in the world so just fucking just keep pushing keep doing you honestly um try to hold on to that hold on to 16 for as long as you can little diddy yeah um please again promote your social media everything you want yep yep just dan the mancina across the board all platforms uh instagram is the biggest one youtube trying to grow that that and then yeah if you want to donate

it would be huge for the keep pushing stuff get this park built get some kids flying out and just direct message me is the best way on Instagram or you can always email me on my fucking podcast Insighted with Dan Mancina email me

insightedpodcasts at gmail.com dude thank you so much this is a great episode I appreciate you email me incited at incitedpodcast at gmail.com so dude thank you so much this is a great episode great episode thank you I appreciate you hell yeah

as always Ryan Sickler on all social media ryansickler.com subscribe to the YouTube channel talk to y'all next week I'll see you next time.