Reminiscing & Looking Back At My Life

My earliest memory of childhood joy was more of a feeling. I recall living in Queens, New York. My family consisted of my older sister, myself, my brother, and my little sister. My mother was the full time parent always at home no matter what. My father was always gone. He worked fulltime and lived across town closer to his job. At that young age, I just noticed him gone. I remember the feeling of being extremely happy and thrilled when he came by to visit because we missed him and he always gave us money. I recall the overwhelming feeling of joy that I felt seeing my father every afternoon when he got off work. He would come by and visit us. He would ask us about how our day had been and spend some time with us. About an hour after his arrival, he would give each of us a one dollar bill to spend at the corner store. I was fortunate and felt as if I was being rewarded for good behavior.
My sister was the oldest of us all. She would walk us to the corner store to buy whatever we wanted with our one dollar that dad had given us. In the 1980’s, a one dollar bill could stretch a long way and buy a lot. There were certain items that we bought every time we went. The bags of Dorito chips were only $.25. The juices were also $.25. We would always get red, blue, orange, or green flavored juices. No other flavors were as good as these colors. I recall the times that I would have to fight with my brother for the last good flavor available. I would then have $.50 left to purchase what else I wanted. The other half of the dollar was never the same. I would switch it up every time. The little Debbie cakes were $.25 each. Some days I would get a Twinkie. Other days I would get a Ding Dong. There was a huge variety of different types of cakes...

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...! How is it that I was surrounded by all these people that I knew, but did not know. I knew them by name, but knew nothing of them. For the past three years, I had isolated myself from getting to know other people. I felt so alienated and detached from my fellow classmates. As the days passed by, I wanted to go to school less and less. Even though I knew just about everyone at the school, I still felt lost and lonely. I ended up dropping out of school that year a couple times because of the awkward feelings I had attending that school. I knew that I really needed to graduate high school by any means necessary, so what I decided to do, was to enrol myself in a new local high school for my senior year. My focus and goal was to graduate, not to attend a social function. From the moment I entered the new school, I turned my goals into reality and I graduated that year.