Wasted Youth
After changing my life around for the better I look back on my youth and it saddens me to think of what could have been. I could have dedicated more time to my education, and received exceptional grades if I would have put my mind to it. Also I could have gone onto college after high school and be well established in a career by now. Instead my youth was spent doing nothing of importance and quickly becoming another disappointment to my parents, their first being my older sister Amy.
Amy was who I looked up to, and I wanted to be as "cool" as she was. She was a rebel who always lived life on her own terms, doing what she pleased when she pleased. In fact she was the person who gave me my first cigarette. I remember that day, I followed her back behind the shed were she always smoked; I was thirteen at the time. When she asked me if I wanted to try one, I said yes. I would have done anything to be more like her. I brought the cigarette up to my lips and took a puff. It tasted like burnt cardboard that lingered in my mouth for hours afterward. Surprisingly I didn't cough and Amy told me I was a natural. Man was she right, by the time I was a freshman in high school I was a habitual smoker spending all my lunch money on smokes. I was doing my best tot be like Amy and succeeding at it.
Yup, I had become one of those children every parent prays they don't have. You know the type, "you can't tell me anything because I already know it all". As for my sister she was rarely ever home, always staying with friends. She had dropped out of school with plans to get her G.E.D. which never happened. So my Mothers solution was to uproot me and Amy from are dysfunctional friends in the hopes that we would leave all our bad habits in Canby.
Boy was she wrong; her home-town of Silverton had drastically changed from what she remembered. Growing up she remembered it as a small town where teens drank harmlessly and just had a good old time....