"I think by the time I was born, my parents had pretty well run the gauntlet with their kids. The novelty had kind of worn off by the time the twelfth child was born. I was lucky to get fed and changed, picked up and taken to school"
About this Quote
The subtext is a quiet argument about what “good parenting” can realistically mean when resources - time, patience, money, emotional bandwidth - are stretched thin. Hart doesn’t accuse; he shrugs. “Lucky to get fed and changed” lowers the bar to bare-minimum care, and that understatement does two things at once: it protects the people he’s talking about (no melodrama, no blame), and it highlights how normalized neglect can feel when it’s nobody’s deliberate choice. The casual cadence mimics a backstage anecdote, the kind of self-deprecating realism wrestlers trade to bond and to cope.
Context matters. Owen Hart grew up in the famously crowded, demanding Hart household that doubled as a training ground for wrestling. In that ecosystem, being overlooked isn’t just a childhood complaint; it’s part of the origin story. The line quietly suggests how an entertainer gets built: you learn to be low-maintenance, to hustle for notice, to make humor out of scarcity - and to turn being the “extra” into someone the crowd can’t ignore.
Quote Details
| Topic | Family |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hart, Owen. (2026, January 17). I think by the time I was born, my parents had pretty well run the gauntlet with their kids. The novelty had kind of worn off by the time the twelfth child was born. I was lucky to get fed and changed, picked up and taken to school. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-by-the-time-i-was-born-my-parents-had-80382/
Chicago Style
Hart, Owen. "I think by the time I was born, my parents had pretty well run the gauntlet with their kids. The novelty had kind of worn off by the time the twelfth child was born. I was lucky to get fed and changed, picked up and taken to school." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-by-the-time-i-was-born-my-parents-had-80382/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I think by the time I was born, my parents had pretty well run the gauntlet with their kids. The novelty had kind of worn off by the time the twelfth child was born. I was lucky to get fed and changed, picked up and taken to school." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-by-the-time-i-was-born-my-parents-had-80382/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
