Stuck

Chapter 2: From the Beginning

It all started the fall I turned seventeen.

I had never accomplished anything significant, and wasn’t really planning to either. My father was a banker, a business man, my mother was a housewife, and my younger brother was too young to know what he wanted to do.

*Aside note...It’s not like what he wanted to do would matter all that much anyway. As was expected kids followed the path laid out for them by their parents or teachers, never really giving much thought into what they wanted, but what was the easiest.

Anyway, along with my average Joe-Shmoe parents our house was pretty basic as well.

My house was two stories tall, brand new, pained white with red shutters. Other than the color of the shutters as far down as you could see each house stood exactly the same as ours. Small driveway, garage on the left side directly under a window-which always ‘happened’ to be a bedroom , each family had two cars- one inside the garage the other in the driveway.

Each family had a stay at home mom and a father who went to work. I am by no means sexist…and I guess there had to have been some families where the dad stayed at home…I’m just saying I didn’t see any near me.

But let me tell you, EVERYBODY knew each other. It was like this creepy adult version of Facebook. Everyone was involved in everyone else’s business. And knew the most random things about you…without you knowledge of course. I mean it’d be RIDICULOUS if your mother actually ASKED you before she told all her fellow baking club members (and their daughters) how you used to get terrible diaper rash, until she found this special ointment that cleared it up after a few months…and seriously who uses the word ‘ointment’? Well, no, there was absolutely NO privacy. EVER. And they all loved it. The gossip, the control they felt went meddling in other people’s lives. Ughhh.

So far where I grew up sounds about as white as you could get…right? Well, surprise surprise there actually were black kids on my street. And of course "nobody is racist in this day in age", that’s why there is intermingling and everyone gets along and is treated equally. BS, First off, out of the hundred or so people living in my neighborhood, probably about 10 of them were black. And they all just happened to live on the same street. "Everyone was treated equally" except that known of those ten people were ever chosen for any authoritative positions in town and known of the crazy-ass socialite moms accepted them. The adult world is worse than high school in a lot of ways…but a big one is that people think that once you get out of school, the queen bee suddenly gets nice, the bully learns the errors of his ways, the jock passes all his classes and becomes intelligent, the nerd finally fits in and is finally acknowledged. Uhmmmm, No.

*Hard fact of life. Sometimes life sucks. It does. And its not fair. And the hero isn’t always a good person, the guy who did all the work behind the scenes doesn’t always get the credit and the guy doesn’t always land the girl of his dreams. Sometimes you just fall. Fall hard, crash and burn. And I could give you some nonsense cliché about how, out of the ashes you are born anew, a brighter flame, stronger and wiser. That the struggles you face now will show you the light in the future and you will overcome them. Things can only get better. But let’s be real here….whenever some guy says that in a movie what happens? It always starts raining.

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