Tuesday, July 22, 2014

The Reputation of Edginess

I grew up the good kid. The nice guy. That wallflower who wasn't going to bother anyone. When your  family is (used to be) filled with crackheads, potheads, and drug dealers, that nice guy routine is being a black sheep. I'm sure that I could go into the boo-boo sad story, but I'm simply intrigued by the idea of "the bad guy" as if those people are actually bad guys.
My first "admitted" crush was this girl named M__. She apparently broke my heart horribly that I have to be reminded of her( from others) every time it seems like I might have a crush. Excuse while I roll my eyes. She wasn't the cheerleader-preppy type. If you actually assessed her style, it was a bit of an "Outsiders" look with jeans, zip-up hoody and a random rock t-shirt.
Moving on. As I look around at the "beautiful people", I seem to be noticing more and more tattoos. Case in point, there is a couple girls, who happen to be "friends of a friend of a friend". These two girls seem to be pretty different( at least in the presentation that I have seen). One girl is a tall blonde with a hint of a wild side. The girl is a short wholesome brunette with a bit more artsy interests.  I would think that I would be more interest in the brunette. I like artsy shit. I'm relatively wholesome. However, I am more intrigued by the blonde. It's not the blonde hair or her height or anything of that nature. There's a mystery. You don't know where the story is going to end.
I know a bunch of guys have randomly awesome(or cliche) tattoos. That's the new biker jacket. Instead of slicking their hair back and popping their collar,  guys are pulling up their short sleeves and  saying, "EYY!!"
There are days where I wish I was a bit more "bad ass". Maybe I should get a tattoo or two. We'll see if that EVER happens.

Memories

There are certain times when you have to reflect and appreciate. A day or two ago, there was this Facebook trend of "I'm so McKeesport". I actually got into it. It was rehashing places and events that used to be in My Hometown( don't ask why I italicized that. I thought it'd look cool). It got thinking about how it's so easy to caught up in the meat grinder of the day and not appreciate the memories. There is so many things that should put a smile on your face.
It's weird, because I will remember certain events like busting my shin off a parked car as I ran from a friend J___ . Luckily, I didn't break my shin or require any serious attention to it. I look back on that  and think to myself, "The good times...when adolescent boys did random stupid shit to impress girls." I should have prefaced that by telling J___ and I were constantly trying to impress a girl with random acts usually of athleticism, such as jumping off her porch and this pretty big bush into her front yard. It's weird to me, because I'm smiling in glee as I type this.
I also remember what got me going to First Evangelical Free youth groups. Guess what. It's was because of another girl. This time, I wasn't trying to impress anyone. My friend, whose  name also happens to be J___, was in this fling with a girl from another town. As we attended, we ran into a lot of our high school classmates. I ended going to this youth group through out high school.
For me, the hangout was Mom's Homemade Deli and Bakery(the bakery). When I was little, my dad used to take my brother and me to the bakery to help him prepare the next days orders on friday nights. We used to do as much as most pre-teen kids could do. We used to fill the jelly-filled donuts, and I would occasionally pull the lever of the device so hard that the filling would shoot thru the donut. We would glaze the donuts, and would lick the icing off our fingers afterwards. At some point, the bakery transitioned into a pizza parlor, which meant that we also started to eat pizza, wing, and hoagies to go along with the donuts, cookies, and slices of pies.
Sometimes, nostalgia is a good thing. I have such great memories of my hometown and my childhood. It could be people that I grew up with or places the used to be. It could moments like my mom screaming at the coaches to put me into the football game. Those memories are reasons to smile.