Stephen A. Smith thinks that one of his biggest life regrets is having children born out of wedlock and disappointing his mother.
Smith brought it up on In Depth with Graham Bensinger when asked about it by the host. “I had children out of wedlock and it’s the only thing my mother was ever ashamed of me about,” he said. “She was very ashamed of me because my mother was a religious woman. She loved the Lord, and she didn’t play that. She knew it was going to be a tremendous load on my shoulders and a tremendous responsibility.”
Smith continued on, mimicking a conversation that they’d previously had. “You’ve made smart decisions all of your life. How could you slip up on this?” he said. “Mom I just did. There’s no way around it.”
“When you are a dad, but you’re not married, and you’re not with the mom, it’s challenging,” Smith concluded. “You’re not the priority that you want to be when it comes to influencing your children’s lives. You have to work overtime to do that because even though I've been blessed and very fortunate to have two wonderful women who are mothers to my daughters, the fact remains that by not being with them put me and my children in a difficult position.”
Smith’s comments about his mother come days after he opened up on the same podcast about seeing friends killed when he was a kid. “Of course, a couple of my friends got killed,” He said. “I've seen a couple people get gunned down. I've seen some people get killed. I've seen somebody get shot.”
“I remember one time, one of the guys that I grew up with, I wouldn't say that he was a close friend, but we knew one another,” Smith continued. “He was joking around arguing with this guy and they were making jokes towards one another about each other's mother who could tell the best jokes or whatever. And this one guy got the better of the other guy. The other guy goes up to him and shoots him in both kneecaps, and said, ‘I told you to stop fucking with me.’ Dropped the gun and walked away.”