The Right Way to do Wrong Things

3. Dunn This, Dunn That

      It wasn’t only pops that made decisions for me. My mama Denise thought she knew what was best for me too. Even though I was a highly intelligent child, she treated me like I dumber than a bag of hammers. Although, she did insist on me taking honors classes in school and made sure I participated in the AG, or Academically Gifted program every year. Talk about confusion. On one hand, I was too dumb to make a decision for myself and on the other hand, I was one of the smartest kids my age. I tried convincing her early on that I was perfectly capable of taking on the responsibilities of decision making in my own life, but she ignored me and went on calling the shots. It wasn't long before I just accepted it and tried to not let it bother me. The only thing this really accomplished was that it made me better at being deceitful.

        I was a ninja when it came to sneaking out of the house. My mama was one of the lightest sleepers on the planet so sneaking out of the Dunn residence was no small feat. I knew every ear-splitting creak of every step and every thunderous c***k in every inch of flooring in every room in the house. I even mastered the art of eliminating the resonant sound of the worn out locks on the door on the side of the house. Any of which could have awakened my mother and when your adolescent son is fully dressed that late at night and headed downstairs, getting a snack isn't exactly going to be believable, especially coming from me. My brother however, would have been believed immediately although he never would have tried to sneak out in the first place. Trey was the unrealistic golden child that every parent on Earth wishes they will be blessed with. The kid could do no wrong in the eyes of Lawrence Jr. and Denise. This had nothing to do with being an expert at hiding or covering up his mistakes, this was the result of not making any mistakes in the first place. This is not an exageratioin either. He never stayed out to late and had to sneak in. He never came in on time and then snuck out. He did his homework on Friday night before he would go out so his Sunday night schedule was always wide open for the Church youth group. He didn't drink. He didn't smoke. He didn't do drugs. He didn't do anything and I did it all. The only thing he did wrong was the fact that he did nothing wrong. It puts a lot of pressure on a second child that actually wants to have fun and form his own opinion about the world and not just take his parents word for it. I disagreed with my parents way of thinkin about just about everytjhing and I was not afraid to cross their ridiculous lines in an attempt to self educate myself about the world.

        Now, it isn't completely unheard of or that uncommon for parents to make decisions for their children. Children are stupid, some more than others. Still, kids can't be completely in charge of making choices that will impact their life forever, but there comes a point in time that parents have to recognize their child maturing and begin letting go and allowing their kids to start living their own life. My parents weren’t oblivious to this natural progression of life, and did allow me the opportunity to start deciding things for myself and grow up, I just didn’t take it. I was just starting high school at the turn of the century and middle school had not exactly been the best years of my life. I was a teenager that was letting his parents pick his friends and tell me how to think and how to act, so of course I wasn’t going to be confused with a reincarnated Miles Davis. The fact that I was short, chubby, and let my mama pick out my clothes didn’t seem to do me any favors either. You know what they say about ducks, well it works with jackasses too. If it looks like a jackass, walks and talks like a jackass, well then yessir, I was a jackass. Thankfully I was a self-aware jackass that wanted to change the errors of my ways and they say admiting you have a problem is the hardest part. I call bullshit. Successfully changing something about yourself, now thats when the difficulty level is set on Expert, you're out of lives and time is running out. Thats the hard part. Guess I will just have to have faith in the... Justice System. See what I did there? 

        Things finally started to go my way, when nature finally decided to begin taking its course. I grew about 6 inches in the right direction, up not out, which changed my life in more ways than one. First, it took care of my outward appearance and even with my mom pciking out my clothes, I made it work. All it took was a matching New Era Fitty turned backwards, rolling up the sleeves and pulling the shirttail of the Nautica button up shirt from my shorts and BAM! Style! Add this to the fact that the growth spurt also improved my already above average athletic skills, no need to call Cleo on your flip phone to know what happens next.

I used to think I was living a pretty nice life, and it was just that, nice. When you think about it though, when is the word nice actually used to describe something positive? When your mama tells you that you look nice before the first day of school, your ass better go change because if you don’t, odds are you are gonna get your ass beat before that final bell of the day rings. When your friend is trying to set you up with someone they know and you ask “is she hot?” Whenever your friend answers with “she’s nice.” Yeah, we all know what that means, don’t we? Better pick a dark restaurant or just go to the movies so you don't have to sit across from her because she is always gonna show up lookin like she got hit in the face with a bag of hot nickels. Nice. No one wants to be nice because we all know what happens to nice guys don’t we? That's right, they finish last. So f**k nice. Rainy Valley. Does anyone know what the slogan is for this shithole town? Of course you don't because if you do, it means you grew up here and who is gonna admit that little nugget of fools gold about themself. “A Nice Place To Live” That is the best thing anyone could think of to say about this place. A. Nice. Place. To. Live. I promise you, Rainy Valley is not the exception to the rule of “nice.” I believe that award goes to describing cars. If you have a nice car, then good for you, you probably own an automobile that is not a complete piece of s**t. So when I said my life was nice, that's exactly what I meant. Not good. Not great. NIce.

        Nice works just fine for some people. I mean, remember that girl that was struck in the facial region by that bag of hot nickels? Yeah, well, she is married now and when your mama told you that you looked nice before school, you probably weren’t going to be the worst piece of w*********h in that garbage can of a school you went to. Nice just didn’t work for me though. I always wanted a life that needed more than 4 letters to describe. I always thought the more letters in the word you use to describe your life, the better. Nice life. Good life. Even a Great life, is not enough letters. Might as well have an ok life. I always wanted more. I wanted a sensational life, an excellent life, or an extraordinary life! This nice life of mine, technically wasn’t mine and most of the time I barely even noticed. Nice was easy. Nice was simple. NIce was safe. It wasn’t bad, just not good enough.

        I was never great at making decisions and no one enjoys doing things they aren’t good at, so I chose to avoid it all together and bad choices are what I do best. There was a brief period of my life in which I started calling the shots in my own life, and honestly, s**t got a little crazy. I was 18, it was the first year of college and I was on my own for the first time, 100 miles from my parents. Given, I had enrolled at the same University where my brother was a senior, and looking back now, I have just realized that my parents had pushed me to go to school there, probably because of Trey. Hell, they probably even paid him a generous salary to keep his eye on me. If so, they should have asked for their money back because that year I finally began to find out who I REALLY was. I wasn't some clean cut, always doing the right thing choir boy. Nah, nuh uh, the perfect little Mr Justice seemed to start coming... unDunn. I mean, we only get one life, so if you're not going to enjoy it, what's the point? Life on my own didn't last very long though, because I was put on academic probation and forced to move back to Rainy Valley after only 2 semesters. Upon returning it was strongly suggested that I needed to find a job until someone told my old man about a baseball tryout at a local community college. Before I knew it, I had gone from being completely independent to being treated like a child and having my parents make all of my decisions for me. Once again I was living a life that wasn't mine, and pretending to be someone I wasn't. .