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very own father.” I was thirteen years old and absolutely devastated by the false allegation, so I ran to my father and told him what she’d said.”
“Now, let me tell you, I had seen my father beat the hell out of plenty of women, and I had seen him beat us kids, myself included, but I had never in my life seen him attack anyone with such ferocity. He went absolutely ballistic.”
“Leave the room honey,” Daddy said, punctuating his words with a blow to Jennifer’s head. “We’re having a little grown-up argument. Nothing to worry about. I just want to make sure this bitch gets her mind right once and for all.”
Richard Pryor and wife Jennifer Pryor
“Jennifer was lying on the floor, whimpering, and at that moment I felt genuinely sorry for her. My dad hit her again. “That’s right, bitch! he said. “I’m the head nigger in this house and you better not fucking forget it!”
“My father had a history of violence, but this was beyond violence, and it was beyond comprehension, too. If he hated her so much, why didn’t he get rid of her once and for all? And, if she hated him, why did she stay? But then it struck me. They don’t hate each other. Dad and Jennifer have a sick type of love for each other.”
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Rain also said this about her complex, yet loving relationship with her Dad:
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“I had an awesome relationship with my dad, because it was so honest, so pure,” Pryor said. “It’s like he could be two people at once. He could be the guy who was on drugs who didn’t have time for you because the hookers were more important. But then he could be the dad that’s like “Let me sit and talk to you about your day and what happened and how can we solve the problems.”
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Wow. When Richard Pryor was living, he would have been the first to admit that he had many inner battles he was struggling with from his childhood -being sexually abused by a male teenager when he was only 7, growing up in a brothel watching his grandmother pimp a stable of women, abandonment issues from his alcoholic mother and father, etc.- and although his personal struggles do not take away from the fact that he was one of the greatest entertainers to have ever existed, it does prove that he was still an extremely flawed human, just like the rest of us. Unfortunately, some of us have flaws that are far more severe and harmful than others.
If we never heal from the psychological scars of our past, we will more than likely grow up still in anguish of the pain of our opened wounds. Pryor and his wife, Jennifer, are just another reminder that it’s often best for us to work on ourselves from the inside-out first, before we attempt to find a life partner, or else we’ll continue that same pattern of pathology in some form. Much respect to Rain Pryor for being so open about her life with her father.
-ILoveOldSchoolMusic, Old School news with a new point of view
