Bill Bernat - Cowboys Catharsis

 

After about eight years of drug addiction in 2002, I was down to no money, no car, no job. I looked at my options and I wasn't particularly close to my brother Tony, but he offered to take me in. So, I got off the bus in Flagstaff, a small mountain town, kind of bewildered. He took me to IHOP. And the pancakes were so, good. [audience laughter] Something about losing everything to addiction just makes IHOP pancakes extra delicious. Don't do it for that, [audience laughter] because it's not worth it. 

 

So, after about a week, he gave me some money to go into town while he was working and get some lunch. I was so freaked out and anxious being around people that I was shaking in the restaurant. I couldn't even go into a little souvenir store. And so, we would play Madden Football on his PS2. And in spite of my fragile emotional state, he had no problem just crushing me game after game. [audience laughter] 

 

We would also play a lot of EverQuest, which is like a forerunner to World of Warcraft. By the way, in EverQuest, when you die, you didn't just push a button and fly back to your corpse. You had to wander naked through many lanes and get past the same baddies you did before. And best case, you lost a shit ton of experience. You, young people, don't know how good you have it. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I was a couple years removed from my high paying job as a big shot tech guy, and I was in a small town with small town jobs and I got a temp job filing medical records at the hospital. They actually gave me empty folders to file as a test before giving me real records. It was very humbling. [audience laughter] I tried for a promotion to faxing medical records to doctors’ offices, but I failed the interview. She asked, what relevant experience I had. And I said, “Well, etta.com, I was point of contact with Microsoft on a $50 million a year contract to deliver search data. And our team delivered and we had a successful IPO.” And she said, “Well, yeah, it doesn't sound you really have any experience with medical record faxing.” [audience laughter] So, she turned me down and I was like so not prepared for that. 

 

My brother and I made fun of her and we laughed and that helped, but it hurt. I realized that it wasn't her fault that I was in that position or that she didn't want to work with me. There was something about interacting with people that I just couldn't understand at all. And that was scary. I got some better odd jobs like overnight disc jockey at a country station. Me and the other DJs had an agreement where if somebody called in to request Toby Keith, we'd play the Dixie Chicks instead. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I moved out, got my own place. My brother and I still hung out a lot. We played Madden, I got better, we'd still get mad at each other. We'd watch a lot of football. He was a Cowboys fan, and I hated the Cowboys, because America's team. But with all the time I was with him, and he had so many Cowboys things at his house, and he just loved them so much, I was rooting along with him, just to be polite, I guess. We went through various ups and downs together. Life is happening. After about three years, I left Flagstaff. My time there wasn't amazing, but I stayed alive and I got to heal. Not long after that, I did get clean and eventually to a point where I love life. 

 

My brother has a disability that started affecting him later, which is he's legally blind. He can still crush me in Madden, [audience laughter] but his life is very difficult. It's never a burden to do whatever I can to help him out. What is a burden, is that I became a Cowboys fan. [audience laughter] So, I get really upset when they lose and really happy when they win, as if I've done something good. 

 

I live in Seattle, where people give you a lot of shit for that. But it is the Pacific Northwest, so it feels like “The Cowboys suck, but also, we respect your perspective.” [audience laughter] I tried to root for the Seahawks. It just didn't work. I'm with the Cowboys. Sometimes people ask me why. And I say, “Well, it's a long story.” I smile because I know it's because he saved my ass. When I root for them, I'm rooting for him. Thank you.