You see, I’ve lived here my entire life, and I’ve seen a lot of thing’s change over the years, and mostly it’s not a good kind of change. It’s kind of sad when the innocence of your youth is torn from your hands by the sound of gunshots followed by cars racing off down unknown streets in the middle of the night. When I was younger it didn’t seem like such a bad place, I don’t know that it was any better, maybe it was just that I was looking at with a child’s eyes. When you’re a kid you don’t see the flaws, all you see are the summers with no end, best friends forever, and parents that won’t let you stay up late enough to watch all the good TV shows.
Yeah, well all the sunny days of chasing the clouds away, were stolen from me when I was eleven, this is how it went down; you see my parents could only afford one car when I was growing up so we would all carpool together in the morning. It was actually pretty nice, we all got to see each other on our way before the day actually started, you know. Me and Dad could talk about the big game that was on TV the night before, Mom could remind Dad to pick up some milk on the way home, family stuff, the things you always take for granted, and we didn’t know it at the time, but we were actually being environmentally conscious by only driving one car.
On May 14th, 2006, a day like any other day, we all piled into the car together and hit the road. Dad would drive because he had the farthest commute to work, and they would drop me at school first, and then Dad would bring Mom to her job, Mom worked for the state over in Montpelier. Every day we’d pull up in front of my school, I’d lean forward over the front seat of our car, and we’d all sort of do a group hug; Me with my arms around my parent’s necks, and the two of them sandwiching my cheeks with a kiss. I didn’t care; I really loved my parents and didn’t particularly give a crap if anyone saw us, besides I was pretty big, even at eleven and could intimidate most of the other kids at school. I remembered thinking as I got out of the car and said goodbye to my Mom and Dad, this is going to be an awesome day, the sun was bright and it was an unusually warm day for mid May.
May 14th turned out to be the worst day of my young life. I didn’t know it then, but when I smiled and waved goodbye to my parents that morning it would be the last time that I ever saw them alive.
Check in next Wednesday as the saga continues...
