The Revolution

I’M SORRY.

I’M SO SORRY.

Almost everyone knows the basics about me. Online encyclopedias (I use the term loosely) have more information on me than I think my parents did. I'll give you the facts I know, the verified ones, not ones streaming around Tumblr fansites and thrown together Wiki pages. 

 I was born on March 7th, 1987 in the middle of a snowstorm. At least that’s what my Uncle Benny told me. He was helping me move in to his house after I left home for good, right before college started. It was hot and humid and he laughed. "Damn, kid, you know how to pick extremes. Born in a snowstorm, moving in in a heat wave."  

 I was born to Irish immigrant parents, and I grew up in Maplewood, a small, suburban in Northern Massachusetts.  

 Want to talk about boring? Think Maplewood and you’ll know what I’m talking about. 

 Don’t know it? Not surprised; no one really goes there, not when it’s stuck between more touristy towns like Salem and Marblehead, and Marblehead is always pretty dead, not even sure if I can call it a tourist town. I never went back there once I left except to visit Lance’s parents, but they live on the other side of town in the nice section with the pretty, old houses and the bright green lawns.  

 I lived on the other side, the side just east of Smith Lane, the side with the houses that had wood siding whose paint was peeling and clothes lines reaching from house to house, undergarments on full display for the entire neighborhood to see. There was always shouting coming from cracked windows and the sound of glass breaking. 

 I hated Maplewood. I still hate Maplewood. 

 But that’s where I grew up, under my mom's dutiful Catholic eye and my father's harsh sense of discipline, until I graduated high school and moved in with Uncle Benny at his place in Riverdale, NY.