Thanks For Nothing

Unfortunately, none of us were high on heroin in this picture.

       I grew up with a secure, loving family in a nice suburban area. This is the worst possible way for a writer to grow up. If I were raised by drug addicts in the ghetto I'd already have the makings of an interesting memoir. Unfortunately, there's no built-in struggle to the story of my childhood, and it’ll probably be a while before I’m able to write a memoir and become a famous writer. My parents encouraged me to follow my dreams and made sure I always had everything I ever needed and more. I never worried about having a roof over my head. I never went hungry and anyone who knows what I looked like from ages 8 to 16 can attest to this.

      If my mom were too busy working at a strip club to remember my birthday, I could milk a whole chapter out of that. But no, she remembered them all. For my fifth birthday she even took me to Disney World. I wish my dad worked for the mob or had a second family or was accused of a crime he didn't commit. Imagine if my dad was incarcerated for life and my only relationship with him was through prison visitations. How about if my parents were drug addicts, causing me to grow up at a very young age? What if I was 10 and ran the house because my parents were always high on heroin? Or what if we were poor Mexicans? What if I had to go to America to raise money for my family? What if I had to ride on the tops of trains and hide from la migra? What if my only companion was a pudgy sidekick? Ok, yeah, I'd probably be the pudgy sidekick but it’d still be a better story than 12 years of Catholic school in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

      What if my parents didn't even exist? In that case, I'd have quite the existential crisis to write about. What if I didn’t know how to read? What if we were all homeless and traveled from city to city looking for work and a brighter future? Even better, what if I was a Kony kid? What if I knew what it felt like to kill someone? Wouldn’t that be a great story? Wouldn’t you want to read a book about that? But no, I’m not the kind of person who’s held someone else’s life in his hands. I’m the type of person who got a puppy for Christmas when he was 10. I know; it’s awful. No one wants to read about that.

      Because of my parents’ failure to provide me with a rich, complicated past I have to create my own problems, which is harder than it sounds. I'll have to do some serious self-destruction to get enough material for a memoir. I could let a homeless person cut my hair. I could book a one-way flight to Paris and never come back. I could throw a rock at a stranger. I could let rich people eat sushi off my naked body (I’m convinced all rich people do this). I could masturbate in the middle of an Old Navy. I could stop cutting my fingernails. These would be good things to write about, but I won't do any of them because I was raised well enough to know better. Maybe if my parents were Somali pirates I’d have looser morals. Yesterday, I walked through the library barefoot but I can't get more than a sentence out of that.

     So, loving family, after you gave me everything all I can say is thanks for nothing. You’ve put my writing career on hold until I’m able to undo my well-adjusted past and embrace a future in which I'm the type of person who if found by the proper authorities would be locked up in a psychiatric ward. The good news is I think I'm almost there.