Sex Jokes, Punk Rock, & My Dad: What I'd Tell My Teenage Self

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Geoff Breedwell!" The host said to polite applause from the impromptu comedy club.

This is the Bar Car. It was situated in Nashville, TN, at Cummins Station, right off the train tracks. At the tenant space to the furthest south sat a bar with an industrial theme. A stage with several tables sits fifty feet away from the bar around a load-bearing pole. This was the open mic where I started my stand-up career. This is where I worked out all my jokes, and I discovered what was funny and what wasn't. Most of my material at the time was not.

The location where the Bar Car stood as of January 2025. (Google Maps).

"How we doin'?" I said into the mic. "You heard right, my last name is Breedwell, and I do, Breed--well, just not with people, yet."

I was a sophomore virgin in high school when I came up with that joke, which was very literal and clearly about masturbation. Two years later, it was considered a "beastality joke" when I did stand-up at my high school senior night, where I offended so many people that parents were demanding their money back if I was on the video. Good times.

The WNYD logo and slogan are on the only piece of merch, a custom t-shirt I bought.

I was sixteen. I had my own internet radio station – WNYD – run from the bonus room of my house. This was 2002, the height of the popularity of Black Hawk Down, Tobey Maguire, and flip phones. Believe it or not, this was just after 9/11, and before fidget spinners became a thing. But if my current self, who's currently holding onto 39 like it's a life jacket on a boat in a hurricane, could tell my sixteen-year-old self something, what would I tell myself?

To be completely honest, these kinds of questions spin my head into a tempest of "What if" scenarios so bizarre they belong in a science fiction novel. If I had interfered with myself in any way, I'd be somewhere completely different. There'd be a chance where I hadn't met my wife, had my kids, or started writing. There'd be great chances that had any future warnings or logic came to be, I might not be alive. (Oh, this blog just went DARK.)

For the sake of the blog, I'll continue with the thought experiment and give you two things I'd tell myself as a teen that I'd probably not listen to.

My Dad (Don Breedwell) and I at the movies in June 2019.

1) You are a high-functioning autistic with ADHD, and so is your dad. Spend as much time with him as possible and intervene in his life incessantly.

It wasn't possible for psychologists and mental health professionals to diagnose a patient with both Autism and ADHD in 2002. It wasn't for another eleven years with the revision of the DSM-5 that made it possible for people to have both conditions together–It's still not an "official diagnosis" in the DSM. As a fourth grader, I was diagnosed with ADHD initially by someone in the school and then by my pediatrician. At fourteen, I fractured my skull skateboarding. By sixteen, I had a punk band, was doing stand-up, and had a job. Compared to what people thought Autism looked like in the early 2000s, I was just a weird teenager.

If I could, I'd give myself a pamphlet to explain everything, as well as coping mechanisms, masking strategies, and how to properly integrate with everyone without trying too hard.

When it comes to my dad's life, however, that's a different story. My dad was living a double life at the time, based entirely on his real passion: theater. He would write, produce, direct, and occasionally star in local community theater shows. He dreamt of making it big, but he never did. He was obsessed with the stage. It was his first love. Unfortunately, he never made it big enough to do it full-time. He always had a daily grind. His grind at this time was a project manager at a financial company.

Due to this double life, my father got into some things he shouldn't. He'd come home drunk a few times, and he and my mom were having difficulties. Due to this behavior, he'd be diagnosed with HIV in 2006. Fortunately, that was the wake-up call he needed. He turned his life around, becoming so well that HIV only existed on his charts. He would later die due to COVID-19 in January 2021, just before the vaccine came out.

I miss him to this day. He wore the same gold bracelet my mom had given him every day on his left wrist, without fail. I held his left hand when he died, and now, I wear that bracelet. It doesn't take the place of him, but it allows me to keep a part of him with me wherever I go.

Intervening in his life MIGHT have created some fights, some more punishments, but it also MIGHT have been a wake-up call. Regardless, the time together would be the most important. The time I was trying to break out on my own was the time I needed to be closest to him.

Yellow Snow, circa 2002. From top to bottom: Me, Justin Harriger, and Wes Breedwell.

2) Keep playing the music, and for the sake of everything holy, take singing lessons. Also, don't worry about playing things live. Just play the songs.

In 2002, the band Yellow Snow was a garage punk band inspired by the likes of Green Day and Blink-182. We had eyes for fame but a short-lived flame. We'd had our biggest run through our small town of Mt. Juliet, TN, and we were on the outs.

Wes in Alcina.

My brother was on his way towards a life on the road as the lead singer of Alcina (Al-CHEEN-UH), and our guitarist and good friend, Justin, was still on his way to being a part of one of the biggest bands to hit Mt. Juliet a few years later, Fridays Mean Tanya. Unfortunately, they would later collapse. Justin plays guitar in an awesome band now, and he frequents TikTok and Instagram. Wes got out of the music business and now leads a quiet life in Mt. Juliet, less than a mile away from where we grew up.

I was the drummer for Yellow Snow, and I loved every minute of it. I still love drumming, even though I don't have a drumset. (If you'd like to donate to the "Get Geoff a Drumset and Tick Off His Wife and Neighbors Fund," hit the Contact Form to let me know.) I learned by imitating Travis Barker, Tre Cool, and Cyrus Bolooki before moving onto bass to learn through Mark Hoppus, Mike Dirnt, and Ian Grushka. I'd then learn acoustic guitar, trying to do the imitation game, but I gave up on learning the rhythm and chords. I wrote my own stuff for my own music called "Black Hearted Renaissance"(BHR), and had I taken the advice above, it probably would have been a lot better.

In 2006, as BHR. See, I had hair once.

In 2006, I fell on hard times economically, and I had to sell everything. My dad was even like, "Don't sell your guitar," but I did. I have yet to buy everything back since. Had I kept playing the music and taken singing lessons, while I don't think I would have made it as a singer due to soft skin, taking everything literally, and having super high empathy, things would have been at least a bit more fun. On the plus side, I didn't make it famous enough to deal with Diddy, so I had that going for me.

Finally returning behind a drumset at a local church circa 2015.

It wouldn't be until I joined a church while in the Navy that I would play in a band again. I started out playing drums there, too. Later, I moved to the guitar and started singing. I would eventually lead worship at a place, and I always played like I was in a punk band.

And there you have it, two things that I'd tell myself at the age of sixteen if I could. What would you tell yourself? Would you avoid a certain person, place, or thing, or would you embrace something about yourself? Would you risk altering your present life or try to keep it the way it was? Let me know in the comments!

With All My Heart,

Geoffrey Breedwell