Castaway Kid

This video is an interview Castaway Kid author Rob Mitchell who was abandoned at the age of 3 and spent the years until he turned 17 in an orphanage. Following is the beginning of an Hour of Power interview with him.

When I was three years old my father abandoned my mother and I. He put a gun to his head, pulled the trigger and blew out part of his brains, but he did not kill himself. And for the next 26 years he was a walking vegetable in a mental hospital. A man with a college degree, a Master’s degree from Northwestern University could put food in his mouth but not remember to chew. He could walk but he could not talk. He could put his pants on but not remember where or when to go to the bathroom.

My mother had enormous emotional and psychological problems that she had masked prior to their marriage, but as always in marriage those masks come down. And three months after my fathers failed suicide attempt she dragged me from Chicago to Little Princeton, Illinois, and it was a strange building and I’m whimpering and she’s telling me to shut up and commands me to sit in a corner and play blocks with a strange boy. And I reach for a block and he steals it, and I reach for a block and he steals it, and I turn to look to my mother for help and she’s abandoned me without a word of explanation.

And a strange woman whose name and face I don’t remember said she’s gone back to Chicago and she would come get you when she was well. And I still remember the three-year-old in slow motion clumsiness rising off the floor crying, no! And running to the nearest door and trying to reach the handle to escape and find my mother. And I was too short and I cannot reach the door. And this woman says, “Quit crying or I’ll spank you.” I was terrified and I couldn’t stop crying, and she picks me up and spanks me over and over and over again, until the pain of being spanked is worse than the pain of being abandoned. And my memories then go blank for a while.

Even reading this chokes me up. Rob's story is such a moving and uplifting one of redemption.. check out the 10 minute video interview and/or read the rest of his Hour of Power interview.