I have a special needs sister and my parents were so excited I was “normal” they made me help out and I grew up pretty quick.

I definitely was middle class, I started taking drum lessons early on and actually enrolled at the mason gross school of music at Rutgers when I was 11 and had been playing with jazz combos at those open mic nights since I was 10 or so. When I was 13 I did percussion with my teacher and others for a production of the H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan at a few different theaters in NJ. I auditioned at Juilliard when I was 16 but didn’t get a scholarship and realized I couldn’t make it in music the way I wanted to because I wasn’t good enough.

So I was taught how to budget very early on because there was a chance I was going to need to know how to do it myself, and all of the people I interacted with were in there 30’s and 40’s because I couldn’t relate to the kids in school.

So yea, I knew when shit started getting ridiculously expensive because suddenly everyone I knew was a struggling artist or had to stop and get a “real” job because they couldn’t pay their bills.