Bit about Me

I wrote the following a couple years ago in response to a prompt. We were asked to consider an event or situation that has either directed or otherwise altered our course. What I came up with is interesting. It is horribly disjunct, and somehow gets the point across. I liked it, and decided a while back to expand it, and make it a bit less pedantic. The result will be out eventually, but till then, enjoy.



It is well within my nature to be clever. Barry-ish humour pervades my writing. This will not do at this time however. For, although the majority of childhood memories that remain are filled with comedy, the one I cannot forget is nothing of the sort.
It is by no means proper to teach children economical status or the disadvantages of lower social status. Children are supposed to begin school without the walls that socio-economic status creates. I am nothing if not abnormal.
I don’t remember my first day of school. I can recall neither looking just like the other five-year-olds, nor wondering why everyone else cried to see their parents leave them in the morning. I can not even remember being curious later that day as to how everyone seemed to know what each other’s dads did for a living.
I don’t remember crying when I was informed that every other dad was better than mine: the coal miner.
I have seen the insides of my dad’s office. A mountain. I have dressed up in his uniform upon several Halloween occasions. In short, I know my dad’s job pretty well. And it is a cool job. What does a lawyer do anyway? And why the hell do they tease me about my favourite shoes? It’s not like one just goes out and gets a new pair every time the get a hole.
But that’s just it isn’t it.
Apparently the other children had lots of new things. I was a minority. If I had associated with those like myself I would have to have given up interest in school. Somehow being the child of a coal miner was equivocal with being a loser. I was quickly on the road of the ‘scholarship boy.’
I had become a diversion. With humour and superior academics, I had managed to obscure the fact that my family was not as cool as it was supposed to be. I almost had myself convinced.
It is by no means proper to teach children economical status or the disadvantages of lower social status. There are words that must not be said too early in a child’s life. I wish my mother had read this.
Try as you may, there are concepts that children will not grasp. Tell a six-year-old that they are going to die eventually, and they may sing a silly song about death. If one mentions to a friend that they have discovered that they are bankrupt and that the bank may foreclose, an overhearing child will be utterly confused.
Unless that child was raised in the age of ‘Monopoly.’ Thanks to the wonders of family entertainment, I understood perfectly what my mother had just told her friend. All of my achievements were about to be disposed of, and I was suddenly afraid of becoming another noun a child should never have cause to fear: homeless.

I would like to say that this stopped affecting me later on in life, but I never really know whether that is true. Once I had planned to be a trauma specialist.
My passion for music has led me far away from that small town, and far away from the field of medicine. It was never really about money though, I suppose. I wanted to do medicine to help people in Africa who were worse off than I had experienced.
Rather, it is about distance. As a musician, I have the opportunity to perform all over the world. I can travel the world and make music with people whose speech I cannot even understand. And sometimes, when I feel like reminding myself that other people cannot tell me who to be, I can go home.