Grapevine, Wichita Falls and The Ditch

Jaret Ray Reddick was born March 6, 1972, in Grapevine, Texas, and raised in Wichita Falls. He now lives in Prosper, Texas, with his wife, Casey, their son Everett, two dogs, Milo and Sammy, and a cat named Lilly. He also has two older children, Jack and Emma, from his previous marriage.

Jaret describes his childhood as amazing.

That does not mean it was perfect.

He grew up in a middle-class neighborhood where families stayed long enough for their children to grow up together. The same kids who lived on his street were in his classes, on his baseball and football teams, and standing beside him when somebody came up with an idea that was probably going to get them yelled at.

Quite often, it was Jaret’s idea.

They played kickball, Wiffle ball and football in the street. They rode their bikes much farther from home than their parents ever knew. Their neighborhood headquarters was a drainage ditch behind his friend Brett’s house, known simply as The Ditch. They explored tunnels, caught crawdads, shot slingshots, rode bikes and found ways to cause just enough trouble to make childhood interesting without crossing too many permanent lines.

Usually.

Jaret was friends with everybody. He was a decent athlete—not the best, certainly not the worst, rarely picked last and sometimes the team captain doing the picking. At six, he hit a grand slam for the Fireballs in the city T-ball championship. As he tells it, everything in his athletic career has been downhill from there.

He liked professional wrestling, BMX bikes and girls. He had a black-and-yellow Mongoose that his grandmother upgraded every Christmas, even though he needed training wheels until second grade. He had a girlfriend in kindergarten and rarely went long without one after that.

He also figured out early that he was funny.

Jaret was the class clown who generally understood where the line was. Teachers liked him because he knew when to stop and when to be respectful. He was invited to the birthday parties and sleepovers. He could command a room before he knew that was what he was doing.

He refers to that ability as the gift when he sees it in his own children. He believes it can be turned on like a faucet, and that learning when to summon or suppress it is a kind of superpower.

He could also be a little shit.

He once mooned the sixth-grade girls while he was in first grade. He organized the after-school removal of another kid’s belongings from a locker and was promptly ratted out. He brought a box cutter to school and told everyone it was a switchblade—a story that mostly makes him grateful he grew up when the punishment was a trip to the office and a few swats rather than a national news story.

Humor became both an identity and a survival skill. When Jaret became “the fat kid” around fifth grade, being funny helped him move through the world on his own terms. Years later, humor would become one of his greatest artistic tools—but even then, it was never there simply to hide the truth. It was a way into it.

Home life had more layers than his happiest childhood memories might suggest.

His parents entered recovery together when Jaret was around third grade. His older brother, Danny, five years ahead of him, protected him from much of the chaos that came before. Jaret remembers enough to have worked through parts of it in therapy, but he carries more compassion than resentment. He also carries some guilt because he knows Danny absorbed more of those years than he did.

Whenever Jaret is asked who his childhood hero was, the answer is Danny. He also calls his brother the funniest person he has ever known. They did not always get along—Jaret endured his share of brotherly torment—but only later did he fully understand how much Danny had protected him.

Jaret attended Alateen while he was still very young. He sat in meetings, listened to people speak honestly about addiction and family, and sometimes stood up and spoke himself. Those experiences made him wary of alcohol and drugs well into adulthood. They also helped form his belief that people are complicated, that behavior usually has a story behind it, and that honesty is often the beginning of getting better.

Years later, when he was the one spiraling, he would have to learn that lesson again.

His father worked hard and was frequently away from the house. The family did not have much money during his parents’ “party days,” but they did not go without. His mother was the great enabler of dreams in the best possible sense. Whatever Jaret cared about, she found a way to support it—even when money was tight, even while she was working, and even when Danny had commitments of his own.

At the time, Jaret thought that was simply what mothers did.

As a parent, he understands now how extraordinary it was.