A Memo From the Past

When I was a young boy, my father took me into the city, to see a marching band.
He said, “Son when you grow up, would you be the savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned?” He said “Will you defeat them, your demons, and all the non-believers, the plans that they have made? Because one day I’ll leave you.” (My Chemical Romance)

I remember that when I was a child, really, not too long ago, I was happy. I come from a humble home, but I always had everything I needed, thanks to my parents of course. As a child, my world revolved around cartoons on the Cartoon Network, playing with action figures, and playing on my Sega Genesis and then Playstation. Sure, I went to school, but I hardly did homework to get A’s on my classes from elementary to even high school, I guess you could say public schools are a joke. I consider my best childhood years from 7 to 14. I had no worries. No bills to pay. No hard classes to study for. I was happy. My priorities were to watch the X-Men, Spiderman, Batman, and Gargoyles cartoons, play Final Fantasy 7 and Resident Evil games, and to read comic books. I became an avid collector of Wolverine, X-Men, and Spider-Man comic books when I was 12. I credit my imagination to comic books and my creative side too, as I used to draw quite well for a 16 year-old teenager. I still have over 300 comic books in near mint condition in my closet, I hope they go up in price. Ah, such good, innocent times. How I miss them.

And then trouble began. I was a late bloomer, I admit. All my friends in middle school and in high school hit puberty before I did, and I was always rather small compared to most kids. I always wanted to try sports, but I was always mocked for my size, and students said “nerds” didn’t play sports. I never did try any sports because I thought I sucked in all forms of athletics, and maybe it was the truth. Heck, if I would have been good at sports and school, I would have gone to West Point. Haha. Later, I did try soccer my junior year and it turned out I wasn’t that bad at it. However, the only thing I was mildly good at was school. The teachers loved me, but my lazy high school counselors never put me in AP classes. I guess my parents were to blame too, as they only showed up when I was given Honor Rolls; they were never too interested in my academics. All my perfect childhood ended when I started liking girls. All of a sudden I found myself saying: Fuck Spider-Man! As a young teenager, you fall in love quickly and for the most stupid of reasons. Looking back, my relationships weren’t really out of love, but rather lust. Being such a timid guy, I always feared bumping into girls that were cute. All the cute ones seemed to me the type that would only date the popular football players, even though our football team sucked tremendously. Girls will always prefer the popular guys. Liking girls ended my abilities to draw. I forgot to tell you, my high school was Northbrook High, a ghetto school in Spring Branch ISD. John’s Hopkins University has labeled this school a “drop-out factory”. I didn’t drop out, though. But I also didn’t impress Dr. Whaley when I said I was from Northbrook instead of Kempner or Kerr High School or the Katy Schools. “I don’t think I have heard of that one” was all she could say.

I found out early on that, I always thought too much about stuff you are not even supposed to think too much about in life. Like, I could never fathom why people danced. What was the point of moving your body in an awkward fashion, limbs flying everywhere and stuff. I suffered and continue to suffer dearly for my inability to just “go with the flow”. My curse is that I question everything, and always try to find logic in everything, and there are some things that I shouldn’t even think about. Most of my other high school buddies were sexually promiscuous early on, and drank alcohol and smoked marijuana and cigarettes… I chose not to (I should have said yes to sex though, I’m an idiot). Well, I do drink a little now and dance and smoke cigarettes but very, very rarely. I was always a loner, in fact, I still am. I am like a wolf in Alaska. I don’t mind. Even now, I have never been the type to have tons of friends, I am really shy and quiet, and don’t even know how to act around some of them. So, I just act like myself. These last 5 years, I have focused on searching for happiness, because one way or another that is what everyone is searching for. I figured, the more I learn, the more I would understand the world and be happy. Gosh, was I wrong. Knowledge doesn’t bring you happiness; it actually depresses you because the more you know, the more you know that you don’t know. I don’t know where I will be in 5 or 10 years, all I know is that I am a good person compared to bad guys out there. I am not perfect nor will I ever be, my flaws speak for themselves, but it doesn’t mean I would ever stop trying to get better. I do miss my childhood, and as a man…I do want to make an impact on the world, not just an impression.