Sometimes I sit and list all the ways I don't belong. The clothes I can't afford, the car I don't drive, the bands I've never heard of. And so on.
Because the list goes on for pages. I keep thinking I'm done and then someone will walk by talking to someone else about something I know nothing about, some new hang-out, some new video on-line, and I'll think, “Oh yeah, that. I should write that down too.” Or I'll see a kid with a new phone, one I didn't even know was out, and wonder how their parents can keep buying them the latest one when my parents had to wait forever to get me one nobody's ever heard of.
And so I write all that down too, about the phone, but also about our parents, and how mine aren't like other peoples', and about money, too, which kids always say doesn't matter, but of course it does, the things you get with it, they matter, especially to kids, and I write down all the things and all the thoughts and all the ways I'm not like anyone around me, and, yes, sometimes it gets to be a very long list, but the best thing is I know I'll have lots of time to write it, because nobody, absolutely nobody, is going to come up and interrupt me, it's a safe bet no one will be saying “hi”.

Copyright 2012 James B. Chevallier