It is amazing the feats of wonder we humans can do when we put our minds to it. We have built massive bridges to span incredible gaps, have built towers that seem to scrape the sky, and have shot things into space so far that you would think that eventually it would come back to us with a sticker saying "Return to sender" in an alien language, or"We don't want your crap".
But, we as humans have also done some monumental atrocious things and claimed them to be something else. Auschwitz, Jonestown, Waco. Those are bad things that have happened due to one person harming, or clouding the minds of, a larger group of people. We never hear of the atrocity that one person does to one other person, and that one person is themselves.
Now I am going to go with my personal story after I tell you why I am writing this. My mother gave me the one gift I have been wanting for the past couple of years. I have wanted the tool, this instrument from the moment my eyes saw it. I received a Nook for Christmas, my mother told me is was a gift that covered both my birthday, that she was unable to get me something for, and this Christmas. And, I gladly accepted the gift and charged that puppy up, and thankfully had some money in my account that I could download my first Ebook, Stephen King's Under the Dome.
Now, Let me say, This book is among his best. It is long and boring at points, but, I soldiered on. Reading each word voraciously, allowing King's words to paint a very bleak picture of a town's troubles, when an invisible, impenetrable dome cuts off a town from everyone. I love it. It is a good book, my mind's eye is filled with this world and the people in it. I feel what they are feeling and now I am within a hundred pages from the end, when a bit of revelation hits the page, makes me open my eyes and get out of bed to come to my computer and write this down, before I succumb to the last bit of the book.
One of the characters talks about being the smartest in her class, she knew where and how her life was splayed out before her, even in the fourth grade. And I knew what she was talking about. This character recanted about her life as though she was getting part of it from mine. She was a bit of a know-it-all, as was I, or at least I thought so, because I was so very bored in class. She knew what she wanted to be, I had several ideas. And she got beat up for being a tattle-tale and being too smart... and so had I.
My mother is a proud woman, she is either proud of her work, or the committee she is on, or more often than not... her son, yours truly. The problem rises is that not only was she a proud woman, she was also a braggart. Anybody with ears was in trouble, she would go on and on to those who was listening about what she was doing, or her committee, or the main subject of her normal round of brags, yours truly. Now this would not normally be a problem, but, I didn't grow up in a area of my school district known for smart kids, yes, there were some. but, they kept themselves well hid, under parents who didn't want to talk to the neighbors. Lucky kids.
Well, one particular day, I apparently did something that was newsworthy, because my mom was talking with some of the other moms of the street. I don't know what was said, all I know is that while I was walking to a friend's house the next day, I got jumped by three of the thugs of the neighborhood. I remember them telling me: "We are tired of your name, coming out of my mom's lips.", ""Why can't you be like him?" she says", "If you would just apply yourself a little, you too could be like little Scotty." I was kicked, and punched, and throw into a drainage ditch that ran along CR 45, next to my neighborhood.
I remember laying there, crying silently, knowing that if it was loud the old verbiage "give you something to cry about" would happen. As soon as I knew that they were gone, and that they weren't coming back, I climbed out of the ditch, and slowly made my way home. I cleaned myself up, and swore that I would never give my mom another reason to be proud of me. Well, those of you that know me, know that I failed in that aspect. Happily, mind you.
I chose to dumb myself down, pretend to be dumber, become a funny guy. Just so I could get by. Just so I could survive my neighborhood. I stopped trying so hard, just did enough to get by. Then when my Dad died. My giveadamn broke. I stopped caring all together about my grades, I went through two years of summer school in Junior High, just because I didn't do the work in any of my classes. I struggled in high school, to find a balance between the two personas. I barely passed. And, because I barely passed, so did that fourth graders dreams of what I was going to be.
The atrocity I did to myself, I can never fix. I have to live with the pain and the memory of what I would have become, had I never chose to play dumb. Now, I will say, That I don't hate my life. It's not the best, but, I love the people I have in my life. I wouldn't change them for the world. The life that I am living now has given me some of the things that the fourth grader never thought of. I guess all I can say, is be yourself, from start to finish, don't let anyone, or anything stop you from being that thing.
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