Kevin Allison (28:51)
I think everyone who knows me knows that I love and cherish the idea of marching to the beat of your own drummer. Right? Of finding your way. And you just have to constantly be battling with the fact that you're gonna get major pushback. And you yourself are going to have to deal with all sorts of pushback in your own psyche of, what the hell do I think I'm doing? Am I crazy? Is everyone else right and I'm wrong? All of that. And so, you know, despite the fact that what he did was kind of lunatic, I also kind of feel like it was also probably a growing thing for him. I think that he probably kind of learned some things about his flexibility, adaptability, you know, ability to improvise, all of those things. You know, it reminded me of that fella, Frank Abernathy or whatever, who was just constantly faking his way into one career after another. And I like that CJ and Ben acknowledged he had a talent for talking. And I think that that really is a skill that. Well, I mean, that's. We work with that in our own workshops or our what's yous Story? Social events. And it's more important now more than ever now that people are spending so much time, not in person with other people, but, like, isolated behind screenshots, that you really can win people over by being yourself. Sometimes being almost seems like you might be shooting yourself in the foot. But sometimes being really honest is just so winning with people. Like, I love the German testing woman who was like, okay, she liked him. Similar to the story that I tell about faking a drug test in order to get a job once. And the. My boss catching me in the lie and just deciding, yeah, but I like you, so let's give it a shot. You know, like. Like, sometimes things just work that way. Some of his expressions, the way he says things like, I just don't have a servant's heart. Like what? And like, it's such a crazy moment of trying to fake out his sister with, you know, madame, while she's pointing out, I see your name tag is just so outrageous. I also, like I was saying before, I think all of us. All of us have, especially around college, you know, around college is when you start to learn there are things I can Be honest with my parents about. About what's going on in my life away from home. And there are things I'm just gonna have to, like, completely fictionalize. Like, you know, I think I can say this on the podcast, but. But my mom is very invested in, because I'm moving to Bangkok, in the idea of me really connecting with a Roman Catholic church over there and finding myself a good priest mentor to continue working on my relationship with Catholicism and all that sort of thing. And, I mean, the actual truth is I don't have a relationship with Catholicism anymore and haven't for decades. Right. But, yeah, I kind of assure her that, yeah, I'm really looking forward to my close friendship with, I don't know, some Jesuit over in Bangkok. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, sometimes you just, like, you. It's the Huckleberry Finn thing. You start one lie and then you're like, oh, boy. Yeah, I gotta keep this going. And in my case, it's for decades. Right. But it is a real reminder to me, like I said before, not to shut down, especially not to shut down in advance, about obstacles arising. Oh, you know, oh, my God, now I can't get this visa, or, oh, wait, I don't understand. I messed up. Understanding how to set up this banking thing or this taxes thing or this health insurance thing, that's what I'm most worried about in this big move coming up. But I have to remember, like, so many people that I've talked to who have made a big move like this, say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, there's going to be so many moments of being like, oh, my God, I can't handle this. And then catching your breath and being like, no, I can adapt. I can. I can figure out a way. And I just loved CJ's spirit of that, of being. I mean, obviously he could have thought things through better. But it's also true that in life there are things that you can't prepare for and that you are going to have to improvise and fake it till you make it almost no matter what, no matter how closely you're even trying to follow the rules. So I just really appreciated his spirit and got a huge kick out of the whole thing. I wish that his family could joke about this now. I feel like this is the kind of thing that my family would be joking about all these years later. But, yeah, kudos to him for sharing it and it was so entertaining to go through that little journey. So thank you to CJ for sharing your story and thank you to the secret Room for sharing CJ with us. When we reached out to Ben Ham, the host of the Secret Room, he said he was a big fan of Risk. And, you know, I can see why. There's a lot that's simpatico. You know, they have the tagline a podcast about the stories no one ever tells. That's very much, you know, feels like a cousin to Risk. Now, we heard an abridged version of CJ's story, but you can hear the full episode called My Secret Career on the Secret Room podcast. And you can look for it in all the podcast places or at Secret Room Pod on the socials or just go to the Secret Room podcast. So thank you for listening along with me and let us know what you think about these Risk Reacts episodes. You can find the whole series at risk-show.com riskreacts and if you have heard an amazing story on some other podcast and just like Kiara Mirren thought, oh, hey, I think Kevin Allison would really enjoy hearing this one, then you know what you gotta do. Just leave a comment about it on this video or on the episode page on our website. Or you can just me on social media, but don't spoil the story itself. You can let us know who the storyteller is and what podcast it's on, but let the rest be a surprise. You can always find us on social media, including YouTube, RiskShow, and always on our website, risk-show.com folks, today's the day. Take a risk.
