The Race Home(short story- page 2)

 

          I recall my days on those long yellow sombre buses commuting to school and staring out those windows-if I was lucky enough to get a window seat- that gave me some relief from the chores of studies. My life was so slow back then and my growth of becoming a man was like a human evolutionary chart that transitioned from each year at an infinite snail or sloth pace. My life was remarkably unremarkable! 

          My life at home was a blundering mess too, I seldom pleased my dad who was an epileptic and alcoholic. He wanted me to be a doctor today. He was very hard on me mentally and sometimes physically but that’s the way our generations grew up, wasn’t the namby-pamby age of innocence of nowadays. We were men at 13 years of age back then, I shot my very first gun at 10 years old and I loved it, hunted in the woods at 12 years old and killed my very first squirrel too, though now I feel an overwhelming guilt of killing such a helpless creature. 

          My days were an occupational hazard of boredom, but I received several blessings to spend my weekends time to time with my cousins and dear friends, and the mischief we ascertained in those defining moments of adventure were memorial if not dangerous, I loved rock climbing and I  would put myself in the most dire predicaments, nearly many times costing my own life, I guess in the end God takes care of his ignorant and careless children. I was a daredevil and loved that rush that came with each risk and the reward was an infamous trophy of bragging rights, even though I was never a braggart because I despised one. 

          But, ninety percent of my ennui circumvented at home and I had to find adventure on my own many times. I was 20 when my mom told me to move back home to care for my ailing dad whom taken a turn for the worse, he drank so much he would urinate and defecate in his own bed that was set up in the basement away from my sisters. I was laid off from work drawing a pittance of an unemployment’s check, but I was grateful for it. Hard times came in bunches back then, you either survived or gave up, and I was too young for the latter.