Reason # 1 To Boycott Your Life (standard:humor, 753 words)
Author: Joan Murray Cefalu	Added: Oct 21 2003	Views/Reads: 2993/1	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Women finds too many similairities between small town people in on town or the next

When you live in a small town, there is only one bowling alley, one
movie theater( if you're lucky) and one drug store. Have kids and your 
odds of running into the same people again and again go astronomical. 
You get so sick of these people. Events became so predictable you long 
to quit attending. You know the ones I'm talking about, the Easter Egg 
Hunt, The Pumpkin Carving, The Picture with Santa, The Mother's Day 
Tea, the Valentines' Dance...... one for each season, one for each 
Holiday, the communal marking of time . But the children couldn't or 
wouldn't see the pattern and wanted to attend each of these traditional 
events every year. 

There were several family who seemed to follow me. In this town at this
time it is the same people, but their types seem universal to small 
community life of other places and of my past. The Win at Any Cost 
Family was one of them. They arrived at these events with all their 
family members and pets. This took a loud, large and oddly bright Rv to 
accommodate them all. These people won every contest or competition 
going back all six of their kids to the oldest ones who now had kids of 
their own. All the adults knew that the parents cheated. Their 
offspring's projects way surpassing the intellect or coordination of 
the supposed enlistee. Maybe because they were loud, or because they 
were always there, or maybe it was the sheepish look in the children's 
eyes as their parents forced them to accept the prize, no one ever 
confronted them. 

Then there was the Bitch Mom. The fates had blessed her with a truly
perfect child. The girl was pretty and sweet. She got good grades in 
school and never caused any trouble. She lived in a tastefully 
decorated home where here mother threw her wonderful theme parties 
every year. She was head of her clique in school and destined for a 
perfect life. Except for one thing, the Bitch Mom. Somehow the woman 
had gotten it into her head that if she had conceived and raised this 
perfect being then she herself was perfect. And being perfect gave her 
the right to pass rude and unkind remarks about other mothers and 
children .She handed out advise, unsolicited, to anyone who would 
listen to her. She was at every event to steal some of her daughter's 
fame and to glower over the losers. 

And of course, the Demon Family, who seemed to have a troubled son in
every grade in school. The oldest was either unemployed and drank beer 
in bottles on the stoop all afternoon or was in prison. Their house 
looked under construction with boards coming and going over broken 
windows and was as run down as possible and yet still looked lived in. 
Each boy was a behavior problem who arrived regularly at school, 
unwashed, hungry and looking for mischief. Often there was one older 
girl. She seemed to know the most about what was happening with anyone 
in the family and was much more accessible then the mother who was 
never actually seen, but could be heard yelling obscenities at the 
youngest of the brood from inside the house. There was a father , but 
he was never seen or heard from... One child was always at every event, 
never actually entered, just staying by the sidelines to see if free 
food or drinks were being offered and to instigate the other children 
to fun just outside the rules. They never won any prizes, but you knew 
a Demon child had been there 

There were other types too. The Single Dad who was trying too hard to
have fun with his children in their few hours of visitation. The I 
Worked All Week Mom, who was trying desperately to smile and not nod 
out. And me. Forty years old , with two children , showing up at each 
of these events wondering when my life became someone else's short 
story. How have I become disconnected with my own life? 

Reason#1 to boycott my own life: I have realized I have become as
bizarre and yet predictable as the home town caricatures I write about. 
And lately I have had the unshakable feeling that I am nothing more 
then the character is someone else's short story with no more control 
over my life, my life having been reduced to the episode I find myself 
in without a past or present, only a now. 


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