Henrik Larsson - Part 1 (Growing Up, Rock Guitar and Discovering Wheelchair Pool)

Mike Gonzalez 0:14

Welcome to another edition of Legends of the Cue and Mark Wilson. Our guest today is our first Parasport athlete and also involved in the governance of the sport across the globe.

Mark Wilson 0:26

Well, I'm truly looking forward to meeting today's guest, as I've only read about him. I'm now anxious to learn about my fellow player.

Allison Fisher 0:35

Today we have the pleasure of sitting down with one of Sweden's most respected players, Henrik Larsson. Henrik has spent years competing at the highest levels, winning multiple world championships, earning a reputation for his thoughtful approach, incredible consistency, and genuine love of pool. Welcome, Henrik. Thank you for joining us on Legends of the Cue.

Herik Larsson 0:57

Thank you. It's uh my pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Mike Gonzalez 1:00

Henrik, uh, as we've talked about, it's an absolute delight having you today. We're looking forward to telling your life story. Of course, there's a lot to tell because you've got a lot of aspects to your life, particularly centered around the sport we all love, pool, and uh we're anxious to get started. So, where we typically start is way back to your early days as a child growing up in Sweden. So, why don't you take us back to your earliest recollections of that?

Herik Larsson 1:26

Well, I was born in the south side of Sweden, pretty far down. Born with a disability, I had a benign tumor in my spine, which is very common among kids. Uh it's called hemagioma. And uh this is a little birthmark that grows in the first year that you're alive, and I just accidentally had that birthmark inside my spinal cord. So it took a few months, and all of a sudden my legs stopped moving, and they realized that this is not good. And uh the you know, the damage was done. So, and this was 1972, I think that with uh with all the apparatus and you know the technology you have today, that wouldn't be an issue, I think, if I was born today. But but I w I was uh born in Sweden during a time where Sweden looked totally different from what it looks now. Today, Sweden probably is the best place on earth to live your life with a disability, with all the opportunities you have to be part of a workforce and take care of the family and and to take responsibility for your life. We help people and you kind of like teach them how to fish thing. But in the 70s, uh no, the case was totally different. They didn't even have a wheelchair for kids when I was a child. I was moving around in a lot of different vehicles and look ancient when I look at photographs today. But it it really was a different time. And if I was born nine years prior, I would not even be expected to go to school. I was, you know, kids in those days were institutionalized and just taken care of. So uh it was a different time. There were no automatic doors, every curb was three, four inches, you know.

Allison Fisher 3:09

And did you do you have any siblings that you grew up with?

Herik Larsson 3:12

I have two older sisters, and which explains a lot of of my mental toughness in life, I think. I guess. But what was so fantastic about my upbringing was that I was no no parents are perfect, but I have parents that did a lot of things well. And what they did well was that they they didn't treat me different. They put a lot of demands on me. I also needed to make my bed. I also needed to bring out my plate. And I I was given a lot of freedom to try things and and see what am I capable of and or what am I not capable of. And that gave me a lot of self-confidence, uh, physically and mentally, I would say. Uh and also I was always with them, regardless of what we did, regardless how bored I was when the other one was in the forest and I was just sitting playing with whatever was close to me. Me always being a part of the family was a given. And that gave me a perspective of life that is so natural that I should be a part alongside everybody else. So they did a lot of great. Sometimes they gave me too much freedom. I can't believe some of the things they did when I was a kid. I was, I remember I was 12 years and I was playing the guitar since I was six, and I wanted to see Gary Moore live, you know, and I want to be in the front. I want to be absolutely in the front. And I had all these kind of apparatus on me, going on crutches. I was just like a stick. And I was right at the front, and I was alone, and the the you know, the concert started, and it took about two songs, and I was almost dead. I was so squeezed towards, you know, the whole thing. So the the security guards they lifted me over so I can be in between the the audience and the stage so I would survive, you know. And and but I mean, what were they thinking? I mean, letting the disabled kid just be there on his own. But anyway, it it turned out well. And and I even got Mr. Moore's spectrum at the end.

Allison Fisher 5:15

So Wow, that's cool. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 5:17

You know, there's no there's no rule of book or roadmap that your parents were following back then on how do we how do we parent with this, right?

Herik Larsson 5:24

Yeah, and in those days there weren't much knowledge about uh uh spinal cord injuries or kids, you know, children with disabilities, and and they were really looking up information and they they really was responsible when it comes to the to that part, uh making sure I got the right treatment and uh not too many x-rays and you know, old things that you need to worry about.

Mike Gonzalez 5:47

Yeah.

Herik Larsson 5:48

But I think just the uh giving me the freedom, sending demands and giving me a lot of responsibilities, those were the things that made me turn into a very independent and uh you know free-minded things. Yeah.

Allison Fisher 6:02

Because you became disabled before you could remember life any other way, did you experience your disability simply as part of who you were rather than as a loss of a previous life? And were there moments later when you did feel a sense of loss, not necessarily over walking, but over opportunities, access, or other people's expectations?

Herik Larsson 6:25

That's a good question. I get very often, and many times in life, I've been asked, wouldn't it be easier if you start with a disability and in comparison to getting injured later? I mean, you have nothing to compare to and so forth. And these are totally different journeys. Being a child, it's a sometimes it's hard just to be have freckles or uh, you know, being abused, being a drunk dad. I mean, it everybody, it's hard to be a kid, and it's definitely not easy to be a child. Try to cope and try to um be attractive with everybody being so focused in on shallow things, you know, kind of. And so I think it's uh sometimes when I try to explain, I try to explain it like if you were the the fattest guy in your class during your upbringing, and you approached later in life and said, well, you didn't have anything to compare to. I mean, you've always been fat, so it must be worth getting fat later. I'm not I'm not trying to put them against each other, I'm just telling it's two totally different stories. And if an overweight person would look down and her or his childhood, they would probably recognize a lot of bullying, a lot of uh feeling ashamed of your body, a lot of never being chosen when you're playing teams. Or I mean, there's so many things that exclude you and that challenge you. And to create that sort of self-loving, brave personality that just uh takes on life, that's hard. And a lot of statistically, very many kids that are born with disability, they sort of are being overprotected and uh they create this personality where they don't feel much, you know, they don't try things and they sort of kind of give up, which is very unfortunate. I I work a lot with people with disabilities, and I would say that many of the born with a disability, those are the hard case. It's easier to move a person who has experience of who created a personality on equal terms to get back to life, to get back to work and get back to, you know, than it is for someone who started with. But I I I want to emphasize, I'm I'm not putting these two stories against each other, never ever. They're two totally different stories. But uh just because I haven't experienced walking, it doesn't mean that I haven't spent thousands of hours thinking, what if I could walk? Man, I would do that. I would, you know, I think the child who's missing something is thinking about that ten times more than someone who just takes it for granted. Yeah. And you always hurt yourself with the most beautiful images that you can't achieve, you know. So it's those are two different stories. I think that when I was a kid and I was I thought that life was not fair. You know, I was uh questioning God. Well, why didn't God love me? Why what did I do? You know, what was my crime? Is anybody ever gonna love me? Uh, you know, all those things. Nobody wanted to hear that. My parents, whenever I was sad, they were sort of, oh my God, well, uh, let's toughen up. It's gonna be better, you know. Don't worry about it. Just stiff up a lip, you know. And a child wants to be seen. And I was always seen when I was happy and when I was strong, and I was, you know, that. So me, my uh looking back and and taking care of all these emotions that nobody wanted to see when I was a child. I dealt with that later in life when I was, you know, from the 30s, 40s, all of a sudden I was more dealing with issues because I was old enough to reflect on how I've lived. And yeah.

Allison Fisher 9:57

You have a really great perspective. And you're I think your parents did you the best favor, I think, you know, dealing with you growing up, don't you think? I think that sounds like it.

Herik Larsson 10:06

Absolutely. They did a lot of weird things. And I was also fortunate for one other thing, which is that in Sweden back in the 80s, we were super strong in the Paralympics. We were just gathering so many gold medals, it was ridiculous. And uh there started a movement in Sweden in the uh late 70s and early 80s, uh, where all the uh top paraathletes in Sweden got together in the project and they wanted to recruit more people into Paris Fort. And they had training camps during the summers, and I was just nine or ten, the first time I entered one of these training camps, and I did that for about 10 years. I turned into a leader after a few years. But the mentality in this organization was anything else. It was a little bit like punk atmosphere, you know. They were disappointed with society not being there, and this was a little bit of a you to society. We're gonna go our own way. Just give us a challenge. Anything worked, we will figure things out. And we were able to, I mean, all the material, the the wheelchairs, we developed our own wheelchairs. Everybody was super skilled when it comes to engineering of the wheelchair because everybody designed the one that fit my body perfect. And we took skills, we could go upstairs with a wheelchair, we could, everybody was supposed to drive a car, everybody was supposed to have gone the Trans-Siberian Railroad, because if you hadn't, you were a woods. You know, it was the attitude.

Allison Fisher 11:33

I love this. Yeah.

Herik Larsson 11:34

It was a little bit uh sort of boring macho, but it at the same time, it was a mindset that what anything goes. You just throw a challenge at me and and I'll show you where the solution is. That is the definition of a problem, that there is a solution, and we will find it. And and that was extremely important in my upbringing to just embrace life. I can be whatever I want. I'm just, you know.

Allison Fisher 11:57

Fantastic. You're surrounded by like-minded people, and uh that's the best way.

Herik Larsson 12:03

I was I was fortunate. And and I gotta say this that mentality and that attitude, the more programs we invented in Sweden to help people with disability, that sort of put that aside a little bit. Society taking care of more than empowering people. In those days, we didn't have a choice. We you have to, in order to create your own happiness, you have to fight hard and become very uh physically independent and so forth. Now there's ways around that. You have assistance, you have uh accessibility is totally different. And what I'm doing right now is try to reinvent the old style of attitude and mental and physical power so that they don't need help and they can experience the freedom that I've experienced so much in my life.

Mike Gonzalez 12:51

You've answered a little bit of the question I was gonna ask you, which is about particularly as a youth, what sort of special skills, personality attributes develop in you differently than than perhaps a kid without your condition.

Herik Larsson 13:09

It's so difficult to answer what you are born with and what is a product of your environment. And I I can't really tell. I know that I was feeling when I was a child, I felt like the real people, those are the people without disabilities. They were important. Every time they feel something, that's important. But when I feel stuff, it's not as important. People don't really want to look at that. So I lived my life very much like a fly on the wall, kind of. I tried to copy what the able-body people were doing and hope that I could have a spot. But always I was feeling like I hope that they don't understand that I'm disabled, because if they do, I know my value is gonna shrink. This may sound weird. I understand it when I say it myself, but I did anything to don't connect me with disabled people, because if you do, then I know that you you're gonna think that I'm less worth. I even, you know, I opened doors that were automatic doors. You push a button, but I opened them manually just kind of to show people that don't get me confused with it with the disabled people. And this was simply just for the feeling that I we're not equal in society. I mean, it was so I got those signals everywhere.

Allison Fisher 14:26

Yeah.

Herik Larsson 14:27

So as a child, when I didn't have the perspectives and and uh the knowledge, that's how you do. A fun story, I was in love with this girl when I was 12, 13, something. And she she lived on the second or third floor without any elevator. And I remember how I used to crawl up the stairs, dragging my wheelchair with me. And when I got up to the right stair, I jumped up in the wheelchair, I pressed the button, and she opens up and I said, Yeah, hi. Oh, well, I was just passing by. You know, I want to say hi, you know. So I just popped in.

Allison Fisher 15:02

Yeah.

Herik Larsson 15:02

Yeah. But you do whatever you need to do to just to fit, every child wants to fit in and and just be like everybody else. And I did everything I could to do that. But I do think that me being all or nothing kind of guy, in when I was younger, it was very much to gain value. I played the guitar, I played hours and hours every day, and I turned in to be in that city, uh, the new prospect, new guitarist. Same thing with Paul. I I trained and trained hard to become really good. I think I was trying to acquire a value that I didn't feel that I had, just being me. And during the 90s, I won almost everything in the 90s, and I I wasn't happy ever. I was happy when I won because then I could exhale and well, now I I, you know, compared to today, I I I can, it doesn't matter if I win or lose. I know exactly I don't have to prove anything anymore. And and that that was not the case in the 90s. So I think that some of the energy and all the power and being determined and all that actually came from low self-esteem. I was trying to acquire a value that I didn't feel that I have. Yeah. Just being me.

Mike Gonzalez 16:15

Yeah. Let's talk about the music thing some more. You brought it up, but it was an important part of your early life. I know for me, I was influenced a lot by the music that was playing in my home. What music was playing in your home?

Herik Larsson 16:28

Well, it was a lot of Beatles, it was a lot of Sinatra, it was, you know, but but my dad put a record in my my dad is a golfer, and he was in Spain often playing golf. And he he asked them who's the best guitarist right now, and they said, Paco Lucia, the número uno. And he bought an album which happened to be a very important album in Flamenco. Uh and I listened to that again and again and again. I thought it was just amazing. And I started in music school, and being brought up in the 80s, of course, it was the big guitarist. It was Van Halen, it was Gary Moore, it was Steve I. And you know, it is so I turned into the one of those stunt guitarists. And the better I got, the more you want to be more sophisticated, you want to listen to Alan Hallsworth, and you want to play more jazz, more whatever. But uh it's it was very fun. And for me, the music was my my emotional outlet. That is my go-to, to just check in with myself. How am I doing? You know, and you I can pick a guitar and and anything happens, I don't know what's gonna happen, it just happens, and and that is a little bit me having a conversation with myself and just letting emotions out.

Mike Gonzalez 17:40

Interesting. So i is music reflected in your pool the way you play pool.

Herik Larsson 17:48

No. I'm a very logical person, and pool for me is so much logic, both the mental aspect but also the most effective way of shooting and so forth. It it's all I can defend many of my way of playing through logic. Music is something different, and and that is why it's so you know, playing live, it's really getting out of my comfort zone. The last couple of years I I played and I actually sung. I don't know what I was doing, but I you know, I want to I want to lead my my kids, you know, like if the dad has the courage to do something, they might too. Sure. So I actually uh played and sung in front of politicians here. But anyway, my point being, I I I don't care playing shooting pool in front of millions. That that would not be a problem. But picking up the guitar, that is different. That's personal, that's me. I'm I'm more vulnerable. I'm not like Frank Zappa, who couldn't care less uh, you know, what the audience thought. I I would be more yeah, but that is down to practice. If I if I play live on a regular basis, I'm pretty sure I would grow out of that. But yeah, yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 18:54

You had a band.

Herik Larsson 18:55

Yeah. We had a band. We uh we recorded a couple of things, and uh and it's a fun story about a bass player that we had in the band, which we didn't find him too too good or talented or whatever. So we we got another bass player. But that guy that we turned down, he went to Los Angeles and he went to Bass Institute of Technology and continued to Berkeley, and then he started to play with Ingwer Mounstein and quite right. And 35 years later, he has just been 100% professional musician. He played with everybody. And two years ago, I was in LA and we were playing the A-ball world championship, and we meet we met up. I haven't met seen him since we were teenagers. And we spent two days together, and it was just brilliant. We didn't talk anything about pool or music, just one guy to another, you know, how are you doing? And how does it feel? Do you miss Sweden? How does it feel done having kids? Whatever you know. So that was really magical, and I of course I applauded his achievements. But that shows you just so much about grit. And if if you have the energy to put in the hard work, you will be successful. Uh whether you, you know, it's not about talent. Talent just goes so far.

Mike Gonzalez 20:20

So with that uh choice of getting rid of that bass player, your uh your future as a music talent scout went right out the window, huh? Yeah.

Herik Larsson 20:29

I I think the one who really uh put a hole in my music career was Jurgen Sam, and he really destroyed it all. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 20:37

So you move from the guitar to the cue.

Herik Larsson 20:41

To the Q, yeah. No, I was, you know, everything was rock and roll, and and you try to be cool, and uh, you're supposed to drink Jack Daniels and shoot pool if you want to be a rock and roll guy. And I walk into this pool room who just for a couple of years was owned by Jorgen Sandman, just by coincidence. And uh I walked in there, I was playing with my friends, and uh he I'd never seen a guy in a wheelchair shoot pool. And that got him curious. And so he went out to me and just like that told me that I do believe that there is a sport where you can compete against able bodies. And if you want to give it a shot, I'll promise to train you.

Allison Fisher 21:20

Wonderful.

Herik Larsson 21:20

And it just happened to be a good timing for that proposal, and I said yes to that. And we worked together for three years, and I was a very hard-working student, since I'm all or nothing kind of guy. And uh when he left for new adventures in in Austria, I I packed my tanks and I went to Stockholm. So it yeah, if I wouldn't have run into him, I might have been a rock star today.

Allison Fisher 21:47

It's all his fault.

Herik Larsson 21:48

It's all his fault.

Allison Fisher 21:49

And then you're you are a multi world champion in Q sport, so he didn't do you wrong.

Herik Larsson 21:54

That's true. That's true. That's true. No, I am I'm very grateful that Jorgen has really been on. My side all these years.

Allison Fisher 22:01

He's a great guy, and he was he was in Rome, wasn't he, when you were there. So that was probably nice to see him again.

Herik Larsson 22:08

Yeah. And he taught me so many things about this sport, which I benefited when I moved to Stockholm because I was able to create a way of financing both my training and my traveling just simply through all the knowledge that he taught me about the game. We we did so many things together. We were in Bergheim with the first world championship, 1990. And we I don't know how many weeks we were there preparing for that. And I got to know all the one, every from you know Von den Hoff to you name it, Tim Makula and you know, everyone. And then I was refereeing in the World Championship in Vegas in '91. A guy in a wheelchair sitting there rapping for Nick Warner, and which was wild. And I remember how how I was totally destroyed by Tony Allen, I think it was. He was playing Nick, and and I called foul on him once when he was, what, you gotta be kidding me. And he made this big scene of talking to the audience. And and uh and uh John Lewis, I think, was head of referee. He came up to me and he said, Well, Henrik, if you are 100% sure we are all behind you, if you are 99.9% sure, then you're gonna have to withdraw your call. And if you're 19 years old and you have the superstars and one is just yelling the hell out of you, you don't feel 100% sure, regardless, no. So I had to back down there. That was a learning experience. And I remember how how they used to say when they were training, we we went for this training course before uh the championship, and they they taught us everything about being referee, and they ends it off by saying, if you happen to referee Mike Siegel playing Earl Strickland, don't panic. Uh we're all here. We're all the team and we're all behind you.

Mike Gonzalez 24:03

So what was the why behind that? Because what wasn't Jorgen involved in sending you over to referee school?

Herik Larsson 24:12

Jorgen was involved with everything. I think you always have, more or less, you know. And uh this opportunity came up, and he just he he's always treated me uh just like anybody else. He never questioned my calls. Whenever he asked me something and I say yes, he never questioned that ever. So we were in Germany several weeks. He he didn't ask if that can be okay, do I need to speak with your parents? Is it anything I need to know? No, nothing. If I said yes, I you know and it was so funny in Germany because I was 18, 18 and wild. And after, you know, just a week or so, I started to hang out with friends that I got to know locally. And he went to bed. We lived uh, you know, one floor up with no elevator. And but he just went to bed. He just assumed if he hasn't said anything, he probably has his plan, you know, how to get to bed. And again, I had to crawl up the stairs and pull my will too with me. But I like that. He he has never treated me different in any way. I used always yeah. So when that opportunity came up, he saw that as a great opportunity for me to see another event and learn how to be a referee. And uh so there's so many things. But it mostly he told me, taught me that the importance of everything, it has to be in the best interest of the sport. Every decision you make, every part you are in, everything. What is in the best interest of the sport and uh and be loyal to that. So that is something that has been extremely important to me. I I've never influenced any decision making when it comes to parasport or whatever, that it might suit me. No, it's on the contrary, it has to suit everybody. And so that that was really invaluable. I got a lot of that from home as well. My daddy's a lawyer, and uh, what is right, something is right and something is wrong. 100% clear in my entire upbringing. And that you can never stand above truth. What is true is true. So you just have to follow that.

Mike Gonzalez 26:07

Yeah. Well, I'll say this now, and I don't want to speak on behalf of my podcast partners, but I mentioned to you as we did our prep yesterday that Jorgen had just been on the show, and I came away very, very impressed with Jorgen for a number of reasons. Uh uh, first of all, the guy that's devoted really really his entire life to giving to the sport, his involvement and governance from a very early time. And just to hear about some of the experience that you had with him. And I'm sure you're not the Lone Ranger. I'm sure he's helped a lot of youngsters along the way uh get better at pool and get better at life.

Herik Larsson 26:41

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Huge inspiration and and a very tough teacher as well. It I think over the three-year period, I think he complimented me twice. I think. You know, it was as soon as I achieved something, I I managed that drill. He just threw another one at me and another one. You know, that was pretty much his style.

Mike Gonzalez 27:03

How much of it was teaching you traditional fundamentals versus adapting given your condition? Because he didn't have any experience with that, did he?

Herik Larsson 27:13

No, he he uh he tried. I mean, he uh gave me some advice or some pointers, but it was very much me figuring things out myself. And I I really fell in love with this game when I saw Takeshi Toda from Japan play. And I was watching him play in the Challenge Cup, and it just looked like magic. He had this smooth stroke and he just made the cue ball end up perfect again and again and again. And I thought I want to do that, I want to be able to do that. So I was focusing on getting as much cue power as possible, getting that smooth stroke with a lot of cue power. Uh I wasn't focusing on making the balls like all my other friends or peers or whatever, just getting that stroke down. And I figured that learning how to aim, of course, I didn't know how to aim, but that is that is easier than getting this very beautiful, soft, you know, Q power stroke. So I I was trying a lot of things uh to see what worked the best. And back in those days, you had a phone boot, you know, it was kind of thick where all the you know phone numbers were in, right? And I was sitting too low, and I just added two of them to get higher up, you know, see how's this working? And and so forth. Eventually I I had, of course, a wheelchair made that was in the the height that is more suitable for me. But that is just how I was trying to figure things out and and and develop my fundamentals, as you mentioned, yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 28:40

Yeah. You mentioned the move to Stockholm at age 19. At the time that was a big deal. Was that a statement?

Herik Larsson 28:49

Moving to Stockholm? Uh well, I thought I was late leaving my parents because of the attitude. And I was just living with friends the last two years before I moved to Stockholm. But it was funny, I I knew back in the days, Stockholm used to have certain apartments inside the central city that was designated for people with disability so that they could integrate in in society. And I knew that there was one girl living there and then she was gonna move. So I just called up the city of Stockholm and said, hey, I can move in the exact date that she's moving out. And they were kind of, it doesn't work like that. You have to apply for, you know. Okay. So I did, but I I think that just because I kind of put myself on the map there, they got the application and they wanted someone to just take over in the same day. So I did get that apartment in the downtown Stockholm. And during the 20 years I lived in Stockholm, I moved to two other places downtown on the south side. But that is a place you stayed there early on. That was the first place I s I had.

Allison Fisher 29:56

1996, the World Championships. I was uh Gerda and me are really good friends to this day. She lives not far away from me now. We've had her on the podcast. But uh she knew you, didn't she? She must have known you. We met at the world. Yeah. And then he said, Would you like to come and stay an extra couple of days? I had some passport issues, I think, or visa issues. And we said, sure, that'd be wonderful. And we ended up in your closet, didn't we? You had a bed in your closet. Literally. That was funny.

Herik Larsson 30:29

Yeah.

Allison Fisher 30:29

It was.

Herik Larsson 30:30

Yeah.

Allison Fisher 30:30

But we had some good times in Sweden. I really enjoyed it.

Herik Larsson 30:34

I played a lot with Gerda for the last year before I went to Stockholm.

Allison Fisher 30:38

Did you?

Herik Larsson 30:39

And she was great. Yeah, that was really uh good practice playing with her. And but I think the attitude just, well, let's go for it. You know, when I called up the uh social office, just what do I got to lose? And and that's probably a story in my life. You gotta try things and you know, nothing to lose. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 31:00

Was it was it driven more by pool or by uh wanting to prove that you could live an independent life?

Herik Larsson 31:08

I I never doubted me living independent life ever. Uh so it was just about pool. I needed to go places where where I could continue to develop my game and uh and pursue a career. And Stockholm was the natural choice, I think.

Allison Fisher 31:25

What did your parents think? You know, were they supportive of you leaving and going into a pursuing pool?

Herik Larsson 31:32

Well, if if they uh allow me to see Gary Moore when I'm 12, allow me to do anything, you know. No, they they they uh they've never got in my way uh in that sense. And yeah, the I think that they were a little bit scared of me going to the big city alone, 19. But uh later on, I mean they're they're very proud of of uh of me. But I think at the time they might be a little bit they probably were a little bit anxious. Of course, yeah.

Allison Fisher 32:01

Did your dad want you to be a lawyer, just out of curiosity?

Herik Larsson 32:03

Did he he wanted to, yeah. That would be a dream come true for him, having Laurison and sons. You know, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it and it's it's an interesting job. I I wouldn't mind being a lawyer. If there's one thing I wish I did was to stay in school. I I went to I quit school too early. And later in life I tried to repair that. But then we have a system in Sweden that you need to have you need to graduate, so you need to do a lot of exams before you can continue I study. And it's it's it's ridiculous because I teach on some of the programs at the university that I want to go be part of, you know. But it it, yeah, I'm still working on my my PhD.

Allison Fisher 32:49

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