Week Forty- Four(August 24 - August 19) Topic: cigarette
Winner: Della
(no name)
By Della
My mom always disagreed with Marilyn Monroe; diamond’s weren’t a girl’s best friend, cigarettes were. They never deserted you, like a man did--she was still kind of sore over Denny leaving her, even though I always thought he was a piece of trash--and they never complained when you didn’t get rent in on time--she and land lady got into screaming matches last month about the rent.
Cigarettes were always there to calm you, give you a second, help you think. Of course, this is my mother we’re talking about. Some people might say her morals are a little messed up--and that’s the polite way of saying it.
My mom has a lot more bizarre set of “rules for life” if you will. Like mooching off of relatives is acceptable and even welcome, because they’re family. Well, it works for me.
People assume (and when I say people I mean the entire town) that since I’m the black sheep of the town’s daughter, I must be doomed as well. That if my mom has messed up a few times, I’m doomed for disaster as well.
Is messing up in life genetic?
So that’s what I’m trying to find out. I’m on a mission; the type you go on that you see in movies with long road trips, wind in your hair; the real bona-fide soul searching find of mission.
So, the list for the trip included:
1 red mini cooper
1 notepad
3 ball point pens
1 girl desperate for answers
And then I was off! I wasn’t really sure where I would end up, so it turned out that I drove to Springfield first. I figured that where ever I ended up I’d do the best of it. Two wrong turns= Springfield.
I ended up spending most of my time at the mall; I interviewed a girl with strawberry blonde hair named Allison who says that being a failure is genetic.
“I mean,” she pipes, “You learn from your mom, right? I mean, your mom is, like, a, like, role model, right?” Agreed.
My mom has never been very role model-esque. She usually let me run free, as long as I didn’t make a mess and didn’t get in trouble. She told me to follow my heart, and if push came to shove, to please marry a rich guy so she wouldn’t have to pay for me for the rest of her life.
Well, what can I say? She didn’t like to sugar-coat things.
At Starbucks, I talked to two people; a man named Colin who said that failure is a choice, and it can’t possibly be genetic, only if you get the idea from your “kin” as he put it, that failure is an option. I didn’t really like him; he was very Harvard/Yale/Daddy pays for everything but I’m on scholarship/.
The other was a woman named Cathy. She seemed really nice; heart-shaped face and soft red hair. She offered to buy me a coffee, but I told her (reluctantly) that I had to get back on the road. She told me that messing up in life isn’t genetic or she’d be stuck in New York right now, a loser drug addict. I hope she’s right.
DAY 2 OF SOUL-SEARCHING: No luck. It seems no one wants to talk to a slightly caffeine-deprived teenager with a paper and pen. The only one who talked to me was the cashier lady at Applebee’s. Her name was Crystal and she told me that if my mom had succeeded in raising a beautiful daughter like myself, she had hardly failed a darn thing.
DAY 3 OF SOUL-SEARCHING: Funds are slowly running out. There was a seven year old boy who I talked to, but before he could tell me his words of wisdom, his mother ran me off.
DAY 4 OF SOUL-SEARCHING: Unfortunately, after four days of deep soul-searching and what not, I have to head home because my funds are slowly running out.
I’ve decided that--ironically enough--the Applebee’s lady, Crystal, was right. My mom raised me when my father, Roy, abandoned me when I was two months old. My mom, no matter what, has always taken care of me the best she could.
Cue the sappy music, right?
Well, anyway, when I got back to the pleasant homestead--AKA Apartment 28B--surprisingly enough, my mom’s eyes filled with tears when I told her about my little “mission”. I expected her to yell at me that she wasn’t a failure, but instead she said in a soft, quiet voice--that was very uncharacteristic of her: “You can’t possibly have the failure gene because no one doomed for failure would go on a mission of soul-searchin’. You’re going to make me proud, Rene.”
Of course, I hardly proved anything to anyone else, but I proved something to myself.
More from Della: http://www.goodreads.com/story/list/2366...
More from this contest: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1984...
