Parenting UP! Caregiving adventures with comedian J Smiles

Parenting Up!: The Origin Story

• J Smiles • Season 4 • Episode 15

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Parenting Up! was birthed out of compassion and answering the call from a higher source. In this episode, J dives into who she was before Parenting Up! came to be with show producer, Mia Hall. We hear details of her family legacy in Montgomery, Alabama, her mom's business, her dad's dedication to his father who was killed when he was nine, and his exclusive, extensive collection of game-worn sports memorabilia.  

Finding true fulfillment often means breaking free from the mold society casts for us. Watch as J reflects on her journey from a legal career fueled by civil rights activism to the creative realms of engineering and product design, showing how following your passions can lead to profound transformation. 

Join us as we delve into life's unexpected twists and turns, celebrating the resilience that shapes our stories and the bonds that hold us together, even in the darkest of times. 

Full interview (including Part II) is available on Patreon! Sign up or view it if you are already a member here: patreon.com/jsmilesstudios 

#CaregivingJourney #AlzheimersSupport #ComedicTherapy #FamilyLegacy #StrengthInAdversity #Resilienc #LifeChallenges #PersonalGrowthJourney #endalz #howarduniversity #montgomery #stanforduniversity 

Host:  @jsmilescomedy  
Produced by:  @MiaHallTV  
Edited by:  @annelise9152  

"Alzheimer's is heavy but we ain't gotta be!"
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J Smiles:

being a caregiver is what made me a professional standup cop. Yeah, like I. Every time I get the opportunity, I have to say that it was. It was the pain and the chaos and the calamity and the crisis of losing my father the way I did and then my mom having such a depleted life so quickly it's like becoming a caregiver allowed me to help my mom's life become elongated. But comedy allowed me to help my life and I will forever owe the institution and the art form of comedy for that.

J Smiles:

Parenting Up caregiving adventures with comedian Jay Smiles is the intense journey of unexpectedly being fully responsible for my mama. For over a decade I've been chipping away at the unknown, advocating for her and pushing Alzheimer's awareness on anyone and anything with a heartbeat Spoiler alert. I started comedy because this shit is so heavy, so be ready for the jokes. Caregiver newbies, ogs and village members just willing to prop up a caregiver. You are in the right place. Hi, this is Zeddy. I hope you enjoy my daughter's podcast. Is that okay? Our parenting up community is growing so fast I can't put out an episode as fast as we are growing. So text PODCAST to 404-737-1449 for updates, exclusives and suggestions on topics. While you're at it. Share an episode with a caregiver you love. Review on Apple Podcasts and follow us on social media. Subscribe to our YouTube page, please. It really helps. This episode is sponsored by X-Free. X-free this comes from our YouTube channel. That's right. Y'all you got to lean into it. So, queenblackness682. What up? Yo? Love that name 100%.

J Smiles:

My grandmother died when she was around. No, let me get this right. My grandmother's mother died when she was around three years old. Her father gave her and her four sisters away at the graveyard to different families. Yikes, he didn't even allow them to come back home to mourn together. After my grandmother was grown and married with children, her father showed up on her doorstep one day, sick, and wanted her to care for him. She did it and took care of him until he died and she buried him. He gave no explanation of where he'd been or why he left, et cetera, et cetera. Idk if I could have done what she did. Idk, I don't know Now.

J Smiles:

Now, that was a comment and a review on the particular episode where we talked about having to care for a parent that did not care. So thank you so much, queen blackness 680. Queen blackness 682, for sharing something I'm going to tell you right now I don't think I would. That's hard. I don't know if I got that much love in me. I'm happy that's not my story, that I have to figure that out. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much for sharing.

Mia Hall:

Yes, thank you. Make sure you comment, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts or shoot J Smiles a DM at Parenting Up, all right.

J Smiles:

Please yes, and we're going to have sizzles, gifts, all kinds of stuff coming up as the season progresses.

Mia Hall:

Hey, what's up everybody. This is Mia Hall, and I am here with J Sm Smiles and we are on the Parenting Up podcast. Now, I know that this is not the usual way that you hear the Parenting Up podcast, but guess what? Today is going to be a little bit different. You know, we're always bringing you something brand new and exclusive, and so that's what we're bringing you today. So I know that you might not have met me before. My name is Mia Hall and I'm actually the producer of the Parenting Up podcast, and I am also the founder of Parables from the Projects Productions, where I co-host the Parables from the Projects podcast. So, yes, so now we are talking about how did Parenting Up get started right and also right. Before we do that, I do want to give a shout out to where we are talking about how did Parenting Up get started right and also, right. Before we do that, I do want to give a shout out to where we are Right now. We are in a cool ice cream shop. I actually have some vegan ice cream right here, cherry. I'll take a little sip. Oh, it is so good, so good. But, yes, we're at Ice Screamle, so we shout out to Jason for letting us film today's episode here Parenting Up Family.

Mia Hall:

You already know this guest, but do you really know her? All right, so now we're going to get into it a little bit. So you know, let's just start from the beginning. Let's start first of all talking a little bit about Jay, right? Because how much do you really know about Jay? And you know her childhood and you know things like that. So can you just tell us a little bit about you know yourself, like? You know growing up as Janae before Jay Smiles. You know growing up as Janae before J.

J Smiles:

Smiles Oof. A little bit about myself. I know what's in this cup. It ain't enough in it. Was that Remy Martin 1738? No, I'm playing, I'm not, but I am.

J Smiles:

Yes, my legal name is Janae. I grew up in Montgomery, alabama. I'm an only child. My mom, yvette, and my dad, jock, very active in the community. Dad's like Martin Luther King. They marched with him, they knew him. He slept at my grandparents' house so everything in my whole world was about activism. If you see something wrong, you're supposed to say something, you're supposed to get involved. So I was a part of a really tight knit village of mostly African-Americans but also Caucasians. We were Catholic in the Bible Belt, so everything about my life was usually a slice of I was a minority in a larger something. So even when I was with Caucasians, I was with a larger something. So even when I was with Caucasians, I was with Roman Catholic Caucasians in a Bible belt, so it wasn't even a lot of them Right. So that was kind of the life that I managed and what I knew to be my own reality.

Mia Hall:

Yes, okay, all right. So from Montgomery Alabama, from Montgomery Alabama, you actually went on to college. Yes, and you went on to school at Howard University. What made you choose to go to the other HU? I mean Howard University.

J Smiles:

That was so unnecessary Anyway, but because my mother went to Hampton, I'm going to let you get away with that. I went to Howard. Honestly, my mom went to Hampton. You know that, like you did, I was looking at Hampton first, but Hampton didn't have my major OK. So I knew I wanted to go to an HBCU because I wanted to have that experience where I knew for a fact race was not playing a part into how I was treated by the administration, by teachers, by the bursar's office, like my entire life in Montgomery Alabama.

J Smiles:

Race played a factor. Alabama race played a factor. It determined where we lived, where we ate, where we could sleep, where which neighborhoods we didn't go in. You know that was real. And now they say oh, you know, we got to train the young black boys. Listen, when I was growing up, all of us knew what streets not to go down after dark. It had nothing to do with how your, what kind of music you were playing or how your car looked. You were white or you were black. We didn't have Mexicans or any Asians. It was Montgomery Alabama, baby. It was black folks and white folks. That was it. If you were Asian, then you were not white, you were black too. That's how they were playing it back in the day.

J Smiles:

So I knew I wanted the chance to say how is Jay being sized up? How is she being treated? Just for her, can I please remove one element from the world? And that's made what made me choose hbcu. And then I wanted to be a mechanical engineer. Howard had a accredited mechanical engineering program and I also knew that Tuskegee existed too, but that was way too close. My dad went to Tuskegee and he was practicing law in the city of Tuskegee and I was like that would be like going to the 13th grade and um, uh, I won't grow up. I needed to grow up.

Mia Hall:

Okay, okay, okay, awesome Okay. So you matriculated at Howard mechanical engineering degree and then, um and'm proud of I got to say, is that Howard.

J Smiles:

Was a full academic Scholarship. How do you pay for school? You don't have a job, yes, but they explained to me about scholarships and test scores and grades and extracurricular activities. That's what made me go during drama club and debate club and French club. I was like, oh, if I get an A, I'll get into honor society and if I'm in every honor society on the freaking campus, that'll probably make me look better. Oh, okay, so I had stuff. I was in there. It was really because I wanted to pick my own college without my parents getting in it, because they told me real clearly around ninth or 10th grade, if we pay, then we say where you go and I was like, oh, yeah, well, I don't like that, I like that idea.

J Smiles:

So but after Howard, I worked for Ford Motor Company and they had me working out of Dearborn, which is I didn't want to say Dearborn, but Dearborn, michigan basically a bedroom community right outside of Detroit, and it was amazing. It was an amazing time to be in Detroit. That's when Detroit, when the American automotive we had the big three and they were running the world. We had the big three and they were running the world. Nobody cared about foreign automotive. Middle sized cars. Yes, they had luxury vehicles, but Americans didn't really care about those.

J Smiles:

Then, and while I was there, that's when I got my real love for international travel. Because Ford, within my first year of working for them, they gave me an international assignment to Spain, gave me a passport. I couldn't even speak Spanish. That's what I said. You know what this thing called Florida America might not be so bad. Yes, yes, I remember my grandfather died laughing. He said I'm going to never buy another phone in my life. I said, granddaddy, why? He said, well, they must not have no damn sense. He said they're going to send you to Spain and you can't speak Spanish. Uh-uh, uh-uh.

Mia Hall:

And he was like no, no, no. He was like I ain't buying from them, they don't have no sense. He like I ain't buying from them, they don't have no sense. He said I ain't buying no more costumes. Uh-uh, he was like, because they ain't got enough sense to send somebody that speaks Spanish to Spain.

J Smiles:

I said hey, hey hey, hey, easy player.

Mia Hall:

He's like we got a translator. I can learn I. Gracias para vivir en la casa. Okay, yeah, so you had many experiences before you decided to go to Stanford, correct, correct.

J Smiles:

So Stanford came. Actually, I knew I wanted Stanford before I left Howard, but Stanford's graduate program required that you have real life experience.

Mia Hall:

I love that I love that.

J Smiles:

I was mad at the time. I also love it too. When I left, when I was finishing Howard, I knew I wanted to design products and toys. What I found out in my last year at Howard was mechanical engineers usually design the machines that make the product, but product designers get to design the product. So I was like, hey, I want to design the cup. And they said, well, no, mechanical engineers design the machine that makes the cup. I said, well, who gets to design the cup and decide who makes this cute little thing, all this little image? And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's for product designers. I said, well, who gets to do that?

J Smiles:

They said, oh, you gotta go to school for that, and most people would did that as an undergraduate. Well, I wasn't about to go back and get another undergraduate degree. That sounds silly. So Stanford was the only school in the United States that would allow me to go into the graduate program for product design with an engineering undergraduate degree. They say, oh, yeah, you can do it, but you got to go get real life experience first. They said we don't care if you work or go feed koala bears, but you got to go find yourself and know something about the real world. And I get it. How can you design products for people if you haven't been out buying products and using them? Yeah, and so I left Howard saying, okay, I got to work somewhere and praise God, ford hired me and I got a full graduate fellowship. So then I also went to Stanford free.

Mia Hall:

Nice, yes, so student loans where Okay?

J Smiles:

Zero student loans. No student loans. They paid me to go to school.

Mia Hall:

I had a stipend Room and board too. Yes, that's goals right there for all you up and coming college students. You know goals All right, all right, awesome, so, yeah so you had I mean everything going for you. You know you planned it out, you know very intentional about it, got your career, but not only, not only did you pursue that. Then you became a lawyer, yeah, yeah. So can you tell us about that too, and the planning, the intention of all of this?

J Smiles:

Yeah, so to back it up a bit. Actually, going to Howard, my plan from high school was to be a lawyer. All of the engineering and product design was a really roundabout way to civil rights activism. Before I finished 12th grade, I started three student protests. One of them got me invited to not to return to Catholic school. They said you know what troublemaker you? Okay, you and John, take your good trouble behind. Right on to another school Because my father was a lawyer.

J Smiles:

That's actually not the reason I wanted to be a lawyer Now. Him being a lawyer did expose me more to the profession. What got me excited about the law was what I knew about the civil rights movement and the fact that for the last, the whole 19th century, everybody that was a part of making change seemed to be a lawyer. There was always a lawyer in the mix. I should say there was a lawyer in the mix that was designing the strategy around. How are we going to break this rule, break these ugly rules for women, for men, for kids, for foreigners coming into America? And I was like I want to do that because I want to help for foreigners coming into America. And I was like I want to do that because I want to help.

J Smiles:

When I was preparing to go to Howard, my dad said baby, don't major in pre-law. That is the dumbest program ever, he said, because if, for any reason, you don't choose law school, you're stuck with a degree that is absolutely useless. Law school, you're stuck with a degree that is absolutely useless. And spoiler alert I hate reading and writing. I hate it. I can do it, I just don't like it. And my father knew that I loved math and science. Like I would do a math problem, like other people will play jacks or hopscotch or jump rope when I was a kid.

Mia Hall:

Okay, so that's what an interesting came in, okay.

J Smiles:

And so my dad said you know what, baby? What you need to do when you go to Howard is you need to major in something where you will take your butt to class. The most important thing for law school is to actually graduate from undergraduate school. Okay, okay With the best GPA you can. They don't care if you graduate in basket weaving Graduate with the highest GPA. So what will make you go to class? And I said math and science. He said well, go major in that.

J Smiles:

My mama was mad as hell. She said don't let her major in something that's not law, because then she's going to get distracted and get over here. He said I don't care. What I don't want her to do is not graduate, or graduate with grades so poor that it's hard to get in law school. I'm at Howard.

J Smiles:

My father ended up being so right I'm at Howard, I'm finishing my junior studies. I fall so in love with engineering that I want to go design stuff. And I kind of tested by my mama one day. She's like I don't know what you're talking about. You're going to law school. You've been talking about law schools and you in the eighth grade and I was like yeah, I know, but you know this, this, I just want to go do this and then see, and then she kind of walked out the room on me.

J Smiles:

So when my parents sent me the money to go for the law school, kaplan classes and everything to take the LSAT, I didn't. I didn't sign up for the classes, I just didn't take the courses. So when they called me and asked me about did I prepare for law school? Did I sign up? Did I send any applications? I said nope. Now I did spend the money but I never applied. Okay, and it was probably it was the only time in my life when my mama stopped talking to me. She just handed my phone to my daddy and she said Jock Smith, and she said some curse words that people wouldn't expect them to say Jock Smith, you get on this phone with this child.

J Smiles:

I told you not to let her major in something other than pre-law and that major in something other than pre-law, and that was the start of me figuring my way to get to Stanford and all the things. So I always wanted to be a lawyer. So I just kind of took another route around it and I'm a bit of a purist, meaning if I want to design products or if I want to be an engineer, then I want to go be that. I don't want to have be an engineering product design lawyer all on one project, right, like I don't buy two in one conditioner shampoo, I want the shampoo that I want the conditioner and then then I want, then at the end I don't want that.

J Smiles:

Yeah, I want the whole thing, you know what I mean. Then I want the edge control. Don't give me one. I'm like, nah, I want to get the whole thing. I want the appetizer, then the salad, then the entree, then the dessert. Don't give me a smoothie. That's supposed to give me all the nutrients. You know what I mean. So there were certain degrees or certain academic opportunities that tried, like patent law, where people would say, oh, you could go do both. No, you can't do both. No, you don't want to do both.

Mia Hall:

You're a purist.

J Smiles:

Right, I'm a purist and you don't really do both. As a patent attorney, you're just looking over engineering papers but you don't get to do any engineering. You don't design anything. You don't have anything to do with how that product works. You're just making sure that somebody doesn't get sued. You have nothing to do with how the damn thing works. So I was like, yeah, I don't want to do that. So basically, law was the very first thing I was supposed to do, okay. So I ended like, yeah, I don't want to do that. So basically, law was the very first thing I was supposed to do, okay. So I ended up going full circle.

J Smiles:

Uh, my father, uh, met Johnny Cochran when, when, um, johnny Cochran was on his first book tour this was after the OJ trial, his journey to justice book tour they became very, very fast friends. So while I was at Stanford, they started the National Cochran Firm, and so when I went to Gillette to design toothbrushes, they started teasing me about having this corporate job, like you know, working for the man and being, you know, behind bars. I got this nine to five and I'm wearing a lab coat, but I'm the only black woman in this global advanced research and design center for a Fortune 500 company. I think I'm expecting them to be proud and they're clowning me. They're like calling me from private planes saying are you through, are you through?

Mia Hall:

playing. They're waiting for you. Are you through?

J Smiles:

playing with your little Lego sets and your bunsen burners. That wasn't right.

Mia Hall:

Black people, why we like that.

J Smiles:

We out here making real money and real change. Call us back when you want to help. I was like that's not right. You know, johnny had Johnny definitely had children, but none of them were ever interested in the law. Okay, and so my father and Johnny, who I affectionately called Uncle Johnny were always saying you know, whenever you're ready, you always said you wanted to be a lawyer. So what you doing?

J Smiles:

And there was a point I never thought corporate America was going to be the end for me. So there was a point when it was it was just time, various things were happening, so it was just time for me to go ahead and go to law school. And so I did it. And so it was just time for me to go ahead and go to law school. And so I did. And so each step it was, it had always been a part of my plan and in each, at each moment, it was time to go to that next thing. So I went to law school and it was a huge plan for what we were going to do next, for what we were going to do next, the Jock, johnny and Janae show. And. But unfortunately, uncle Johnny passed of brain cancer during my first year of law school.

Mia Hall:

Wow, man, okay, okay, yeah, so that that changed some things there. Okay, so that was, that's what happened to your first year of law school. But so then, what happened after that? As far as you know, where did your career go?

J Smiles:

OK. So for a few years my dad and I were scratching our heads and our bellies really wounded and hurt. My father was devastated when Uncle Johnny passed. He was a big brother and a mentor. And then my dad was also determined to keep the firm together Because the Carcon firm was the first national franchise-based plaintiff's law firm in the country period. And my dad.

J Smiles:

When Uncle Johnny passed, my dad felt personally responsible for keeping it together. So it was my father, johnny Cochran and then two Caucasian men. So it was. It was a great mix initially. So when Mr Cochran passed it was my father left.

J Smiles:

My dad became the president, so my dad felt to be he was then the only remaining African-American partner and he was like, ok, I'm going to put Johnny's legacy and all the black community on my back. And I'm about to fly around to every office and I saw what it was taken out of him. It was, oh God, it was awful. It was awful. Trying to keep the firm together killed my daddy to me, I think it killed him. I think the stress of it killed him. A lot of the infighting, because naturally everyone's jockeying for power, because if Johnny Carpenter's dead, then, like now, who's going to get you know, regionally, everybody is trying to get a little more power. Trying to, you know. I mean, it's to be expected, yeah, but it's hard to watch when it's your father that is the one who's getting the chunks bitten out of his side or out of his legs.

J Smiles:

So basically, I joined the cop and firm and I was assisting my dad in high profile cases. I worked on stuff with him for Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King's Martin Luther King Jr uh, florida Mayweather cases like that, yeah, um, as well as as other um plaintiff's liability cases, um, and then, uh, we were working through that as well, as my father was a major major sports fanatic and he was a major major sports fanatic and he was an avid sports collector since the 1980s. And what we decided, probably about three or four years after Johnny passed and I was talking with him, we were actually having lemon drop martinis. That was the only kind of non put hair on your chest drink. He would drink, but he would do that with me when we were having like a daddy daughter moments.

J Smiles:

He would sit at the bar and drink that with me and he said well, baby, what do we want to do now? Okay, like you know, the Johnny Jene thing is not going to really do what we're going to do, and so my idea was to take his collection, which was the largest sportsman of any collection of anybody in the world. My dad had, with the help and blessing of my mom, amassed this huge collection of Game 1 sports memorabilia over like a 30 or 40-year period, and you know everybody, from Babe Ruth to Michael Jordan, to Jesse Owens, to Jackie Robinson to Jack Johnson. You know black, white everybody tennis, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, basketball, whatever you can think of. Yeah, if it's North American, even Pele, I have two Pele jerseys. And so I said well, you know what, dad? There's a whole lot of daughter, daddy legal tickets, but nobody else has our collection.

J Smiles:

So, let's get that shit out, let's do something with it. So that became our big push. Okay, so let's get that shit out, let's do something with it. So that became our big push. Okay, and about five years after I got out of law school, four or five years after I got out of law school, we were pushing to have a major showing of that in Las Vegas. Okay, so we were, um, pushing to open, uh, a museum slash uh experience like 3d virtual experience that you know you buy a ticket, you come through. So you feel like, oh, am I, am I outside, am I trying to? Can I pitch a fastball as fast as a major league baseball player, can I? We even had a NASCAR pitch like a pit crew so you could test yourself and say can I change a tire as fast as they can in the pit crew? So we were making like a whole sports experience spot spot. Okay, that was the goal. And then we're going tour it all around, right?

J Smiles:

so you've had that anyway, I'm sorry yeah, no, that's.

Mia Hall:

I mean that's.

J Smiles:

You know what I was going to maybe it's me you should probably be on this interview.

Mia Hall:

I don't want you to know. No, no, no, it's not you, it's not you, it's not you, it's life, it's life. But yeah, but I mean it. Just you had, I mean, not only, I mean I know. You know you had the sports, you know, collection that you were going to do in Vegas, but you know you also, you know still were doing product design. And you know, internationally I remember that you were speaking about you know, working with people in on the continent of Africa, right With young girls.

Mia Hall:

Yes, you know, and you were in the middle of that when your father passed as well. Like, can you just talk about? Like, because I know you lived a very intentional life. It sounds like you were doing a lot of things. You know you had it going on, you know, just like out here, you know you had a very specific plan. And then you know, when your father died, not only did he die, and then that's when you know, your mom's health started to decline. So can you just talk about what you were doing before your father passed? So, can you just talk?

J Smiles:

about what you were doing before your father passed. And then you know what happened when your father passed yeah, I was doing that stuff that people would say uh-uh, nuh-uh, like right now, if it was on social media, it would sound like, no, you don't, no, you can't. I wouldn't believe it. Now, looking back on it, like, who was that Right? And how do you get to do that? Yeah, because I'm not famous. You know what I mean. I'm like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not now. I wasn't then Not a billionaire. You know, I'm not a part of a royal family, daddy was not Barack Obama. So, like, how did you get to do that and experience those things? Now, I'm not going to lie, I got to sprinkle in a little bit of it was some favor, some good luck. Um, sprinkle in a little bit of it was some favor, some good luck. And then also some I didn't like to settle for stuff I didn't want to do. I was like, well, yeah, no, I don't want to do that. You know, like when I was sharing earlier, I was like, ok, no, I want to be a product designer. Oh, if Stanford is the only place that's going to, let me do it and they're going to make me work first? What if I'm going to just wait and go work first? All of my friends, including my mama, were mad as hell at me. They said why don't you just go get your graduate work at some other engineering school, go to MIT, go to Georgia Tech, what are you talking about? I was like no, they don't have a program I I want. So I just waited. I don't have no problem waiting on what I want. So what I was doing before that was when I finished law school.

J Smiles:

There were two things happening simultaneously. I was convincing my dad first of all that we should even let our hope diamond type collection see the light of day. Okay, because up to that point you had to know me, my mama or my daddy to see or touch any of the pieces. There was no way for you to see anything else, any of the pieces. There was no way for you to see anything else. Everything else was under lock and key in a vault that you know. We'd have to kill you to tell you where it was. But because of my travel, in living in Europe and living in Africa and traveling around, and I saw what historical pieces meant to human beings, not just reading about it. But when you can touch it and say, oh yeah, that came from some pharaoh's tomb somewhere in Egypt, or that's the 16th chapter. And when you read about it, and then you see it, it changes everything. And you see little kids and old men walking out of buildings crying and you overhear them talk about well, when I get home I'm going to do this. And that emboldened me to go and talk to my family and say, listen, we can't keep Jesse Owens' track shoes from the 1936 Olympics where he got four gold medals in front of Hitler in the family vault. No more, they're the only pair that exists in the world. We got to show them, we got to share them. And my mom was like I ain't got nothing to do with that, I'm going to court. My dad was like, well, if you can convince me. So I was doing that to get Vegas set up.

J Smiles:

And then, as a lawyer, I was a part of a team that represented the United States on behalf of the State Department and we would go to select countries in Africa and do the best way to put. It is like to say legal goodwill missions, say, hey, we have our tried and true legal practices, all right, whatever African nation Kenya I personally went to Kenya, ghana, liberia and Namibia yeah, ok, for this particular work. To say, hey, you all have your Legal Methods, ok. And the difference in Africa is there. There are there's statutory laws like what we write, there are written laws that. And then there are tribal or customary laws that are not written, that, depending on what tribe you go to it, the global international economic table they're going to have to have laws that everybody else can understand how you do that without disrespecting the tribal customs. Ok, all right. So there were a group of black lawyers who said, hey, let's try to say let's go with him. Hey, listen, listen, ain't nobody trying to. It make sense, because the goal is to get everybody to the table to have a big piece of this pie. So we went over having those kinds of conversations. So here I am meeting with their versions of, like, the Supreme Court and I'm like in my early 30s and I'm like is this real? Is this real? I'm a part of like their version of the CIA. You know what I mean. They picking me up from the airport and I'm like what Are you really serious right now? And basically legal goodwill missions. And it was then that I was able to let them know that, hey, I'm also an engineer and a product designer and I have this affinity for young girls of color, math and science and helping them stay in school. And they were like, hey, I can tell you who you can meet.

J Smiles:

And during my breaks other people were going on tours. I would go to slums. I didn't want to go to the tour where the tourists go. I changed all my clothes, put on something with no brand right, like not even Levi's. So you know, americans, we would be like, oh, it's Levi's. Like no Levi's are worth $1,000 in some of these places. Like nothing Right, with no label on it. Go to the slums, and I'm calling it slums. Because they call it slums, I'm not attaching that label. I met young girls and their headmasters who told me they only dropped out of school because of their menstrual cycles right, brilliant mm-hmm but between 12 and 15 years old.

J Smiles:

Because of a natural monthly occurrence, they could not stay in school because it was too dangerous to walk from where they live to the school. Because of their pheromones, there was worry that that young lady may be accosted because she's now ready to conceive or to be received by some man, and or she doesn't have the proper uh equipment or products to take care of her menstrual cycle. So she needs to just stay at home with her mom and her grandmama in the hut, because they don't have sanitary napkins and you can't use tampons, because that's against customary rules. You can't put anything up, because that's against customary rules. You can't put anything up in there because you're still a virgin.

J Smiles:

I was like I didn't think about that. I absolutely used a tampon before I had sex, never thought about the fact that maybe I wasn't a virgin. When I thought I was a virgin you know what I mean Like spiritually, I was like what in the whole hell, right? So those kind of things got me on a boom. So my plan was I'm about to fix it, You're about to fix that whole.

Mia Hall:

Thing. What I'm 360.

J Smiles:

Yeah, I'm going to use my connections in Italy to design the answer for these young sisters. To design the answer for these young sisters, we're going to design a product that's going to take care of this mental cycle shit, that they're going to be able to go to school and take care of their families, and I'm going to get all the people I know in America to pay for it. And I'm going to live between Africa, italy and the United States and life is about to be good and I'm going to start that in my mid-30s. And, holly, if you hear me, hide your husband, hide your son.

Mia Hall:

Hide your kids. I'm sorry, bend open baby.

J Smiles:

Hide your kids hide your wife and hide your husband. Yeah, okay, okay, I was like, listen, I'm gonna see y'all around thanksgiving. Other than that, you better come see me.

Mia Hall:

Uh-huh, got a plan yeah, okay, it's coming together too.

J Smiles:

It's coming together then then my mom and dad were watching a football game in January on the couch in Montgomery Alabama. It was cold. What year was this? 2012. January 8th 2012. The New York Giants were playing the Atlanta Falcons. Eli Manning, it was his second and what would end up being his second and final Never mind, I'm going to play. So they went to. It was cold. They were watching the game. My dad is so New York. He had every version of DirecTV and satellite whatever, so he could get all the New York pregames, okay. So even though the game might not come on until 1 o'clock, they got up at like 9 in the morning to see all the Madison Square Garden Network, new York, all that. It was ridiculous. He's getting the radio stuff that they played on the TV. It was stupid. He's getting the radio stuff when they play it on the TV. It's stupid. He knows when they're wearing a new color shoelace. He was on the spectrum for New York If there's New Yorktism like they got. Autism. I had.

Mia Hall:

New Yorktism. He's talking about the cable network he's talking about.

J Smiles:

I'm trying to tell you my daddy had it, he was on it, your dude had it being a New Yorker.

Mia Hall:

There's nothing wrong with that. Alright, see, nothing wrong with New Yorktism.

J Smiles:

I tell you what there's definitely not a pill for it. They don't don't feel for that, no, and they don't have. No, what is it? Stem cell ain't. No stem cell transplant for that either. So it was still cold.

J Smiles:

Mom went to their bedroom to get a blanket. She came back, her dad wasn't talking, wasn't breathing. She couldn't get him to move. She called 911. She told him he's non-responsive and unconscious and the paramedics came. And that's the last time my mom sounded like herself.

J Smiles:

I wasn't in Alabama. She called me to say Jay, don't worry. What did I do? Worried, worried, everywhere. It wasn't nothing but worry. I immediately started crying. I jumped out of bed. I remember standing up against the wall in the room and like immediately sliding down the wall and like crashing to the floor, sobbing and crying. And she was like crashing to the floor, sobbing and crying. And she was like no, no, no, hold it together, hold together. We're going to pray. It's going to be okay. Your father's going to be okay. He's going to be okay. The paramedics are here. They're working on it. I'm going to go to the hospital and pull it together. I want you to get home and sit on your cab, but don't don't do anything. That'll be safe. Ok, mama loves you. That woman and that boy, that's my mom, that was, that was my mama that was talking. Hey, you're still here. The entire Origin episode on patreoncom forward slash JSmileStudios.