Posted: January 20, 2020
Tell Me Something, She Said
Review
The thing about homelessness is that if I read a fiction book about it, it's not going to be as impactful as this book because ultimately it's not real, it's fiction. But this book is about things that really happened. All the details really happened to someone, in this case David Raether. And that gives this book a high level of authority regarding the topic of homelessness.
It's a engaging read, and surprisingly humorous at times.
I recommend this book for anybody curious about the subject of homelessness in particular and the subject of life in general.
David's experience demonstrates how tough he is. Hopefully this is also an indication of how tough we all are. It was a harrowing gauntlet that he went through but I'm thankful to him that he wrote it because by doing so he communicates something essential that, in my case, is very helpful to know: that it is possible to survive life's darkest days.
Synopsis
"Tell Me Something She Said" is the story of how David Raether, a successful hollywood writer, lost it all in his mid-forties. He talks about becoming homeless, the impact on his family, and how he managed to start improving his situation.
David was one of the writers for the hit tv show "Roseanne". He also mentions doing one other writing job, I believe it was a pilot for a tv program, and it paid him around $600,000. So he found himself in his mid-forties with millions to his name, an unusually big family and a nice house in suburbia. With all that security David did what I would do, and, I suspect, what a lot of other people would be tempted to do. He decided to take a break.
The money eventually dwindled and so David decided to get back to work. Unfortunately the landscape had changed on him: sitcoms where no longer pre-eminent, it was the age of reality TV and David found that there was no demand for his particular skills. What follows next is harrowing.
David describes losing every material thing: the house, the cars, everything. And he describes the the impact on his large family. His older children becoming dispersed with at least one of them living with another family. His wife had to go back to Germany with the two youngest children since Germany had a better social security system than the U.S.
Before the disintegration of his family, for a time, they had to live in motels. A particularly impactful moment was when David described when he sat in the alley beside a motel, head bowed down cradled by his hands, just feeling the tremendous pressure of it all.
David describes his first night as a homeless person where he had an uneasy sleep under a stairwell. He describes surviving by going into grocery stores and eating food samples. At one time he still had his minivan, and he slept there while ambling to Starbucks in the morning in the hopes of happening on a used newspaper to do the crosswords.
He describes the massive amount of time available to a homeless person.
There was one incident where a $17 royalty check came in from his "Roseanne" work and he decided to treat himself to an Armenian chicken dinner. He couldn't finish it in one sitting because his stomach had grown used to so little food.
David describes his big dream during this time which was to simply have a room with a proper bed. To simply be able to change into sleeping clothes and pull the sheets up and sleep without worrying about his surroundings.
Eventually David was able to work himself out of the streets by getting odd jobs.