From the prompt: How would you start your auto-biography?
Growing up, I always wanted to be older. Being older, I wanted to grow younger. Reaching a close, I wanted to stand still. Through all of this, I knew who I was, who I still am until that fateful last breath. I am a child at heart, a man at mind, and a realist in the world around me. I have lived the life you dream of, where you accomplish your goals, fall in love, and change the world. Since I was a child, I knew that I could die at any moment and yet I could die happy if I did. A life of no regrets, a life of little fret, a life where if I want hard enough I can surely get. Guided through the fog without the aid of a guide dog I have managed to keep a constant stream of joy flowing throughout my life. Born a boy, died a boy, that’s my story. But if you skip to the end you miss all my struggle and glory. I have seen the world and yet here I remain, as I have stood for years gone by I will stay the same until the day I die.
My story today doesn’t start at the beginning. How am I supposed to keep you entertained with stories of poopy diapers and golden childhoods where I couldn’t possibly do anything remotely wrong… No no no, instead I start my story in high school, the four years where I became who I am today. It took me years to see it, but I was in fact quite egotistical as a child. I mean, I had every reason to be. I had a family that loved me, a ton of great friends who I got to see everyday, and grades that were quite good but I didn’t have to worry about being perfect all of the time. Then came middle school, where shockingly everybody didn’t fall in love with me. I know, right? But alas, I didn’t know then that I was a fool, and middle school soon led way to high school and I found out the hard way.
High school didn’t start very well. Why, you may ask? Well, I never really wanted to go to my high school. It was the fifth school on my list of applications and I only went there because I knew some people who went there and it was in the neighborhood. Naturally, I didn’t get into my other choice schools and ended up going to the lovely School of the Future. Don’t get me wrong, I love School of the Future, NOW. But I remember that it scared me at first. Before I attended high school there, I visited the school on a tour and I was afraid I wouldn’t get shot or something if I went there. Preposterous, I know, but I was 13 then, so my eyes didn’t see things quite right.
On my first day, I made snap judgments during an assembly for our entering 9th Grade, our class of 2010. Oh yea, by the way, my high school had a middle school in the same building, under the same name so a lot of my grade had already been classmates for three years. Back to orientation now. We had to walk around the room with a bingo board full of questions that we would ask people to get to know them. I looked at my classmates, made snap judgments. Told you this, but I just want to catch back up. So I looked around the room. Loser, cool guy, class hotty, class clown, everybody you could think of, I found in that room of a hundred.
The first couple of periods that day we got to know each other more in depth. I thought this was my time to become an individual, to find my place. I tried to be funny, and well, I failed miserably. You see, the class clown was in my class, and there was no way I was going to overthrow his reign. I liked the guy though, so I couldn’t even try to be a jerk to him, I had to get along. Ugh.