I guess it has taken me many years to figure it out. I guess I should have figured this out in first grade or was it kindergarten when I was “asked” to leave. It didn”t get much better from there on. I don”t even remember much about elementary school, seems like I was in a bunch of them. Let”s see from there I guess we move on to junior high. Again I guess you could say I wasn”t the prize of the school or should I say schools. I went to a couple of them and even missed most of I believe 7th grade since I was locked up in some place. I wasn”t too successful there either.
I never could learn to just keep my head down and go along with things. Anyway to make a long story short, all I remember is there was a LARGE woman sitting on me while others were putting leather restraints on me. They took me up to the main building where all the nuts were. That was scary. I cried. I was 12 and surrounded by real nuts talking to themselves and all. My mother wanted me to do the grade over that I missed, but they tested me and said I was fine. I tell you it”s not easy being unsuccessful in life when everyone tells you how successful I should be. I finally made it to high school.
I skipped about 80 days and so had to stay back. For my second year I ended up living with some family and I made it through 9th grade of course kicking and screaming the whole way. At one point the teacher refused to even hear my voice. If I had to say something he wanted for me to write it down. I had so much potential according to him he just couldn”t understand why I do the things I do. I guess he didn”t realize that not everyone in life is going to be successful. Well made it to 10th grade and then, I quit school and that family who had been so good to me. I still feel bad over that.
I didn”t really do anything wrong I just left. I never burned too many bridges in life, just pick up and go. So there I was at 16 out on my own driving around thinking I was on top of the world. For the next couple of years I tried my hand at crime. I didn”t really want to break the pattern I was building in life so needless to say I didn”t turn out to be the local crime boss. In the end I realized that this wasn”t working but didn”t know what else to do. I didn”t want to work since I didn”t then understand the concept of biding one”s time and working your way up. All I saw was the first step and that was the end for me.
So there I was, now 20 and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life when I ended up moving – to the state prison system. Yeah, just like that. I was in my bed one evening and ten minutes later I was in handcuffs. I was 5 months into my 20″s and would not see the outside of a prison until the age of 30. So you think, “Well prison, here you must have been successful. How hard can it be to mess that up? ” Well Sir, or Madam or whoever might be reading this, haven”t you read the top of the page where it says Not Everyone Is Going To Be Successful In Life?
So no I actually screwed that up too. Whereas you have people that spend years at one place keeping quiet and going with the flow, I ended up in numerous different places. To make matters worse, the successful prisoners yes you can have successful people everywhere worked their way through the system from higher security to lower security and eventually to pre-release, I did the opposite. I started off at medium and walked out from the state”s maximum-security prison. So there I was a free man at the age of 30.
Never really worked a day in my life, no formal education with a bad criminal record and barely a penny in my pocket. Yet I must admit I was full of hope. Much to my demise I forgot something that I never should have forgotten. Namely not everyone in life is going to be successful. If I would only remember that I tell you that I would have much less pain in life. Anyway, I moved back in with my crazy mother for the first time since I was 14. I had no money so I went about looking for a job. My mother told me not to lie on the applications so of course nobody would hire me.
Then I said the hell with this and lied and got a job at a fast food restaurant. The manager looked at me, I”m kind of clean cut looking and wanted to know what I was doing there looking for work. They offered me a manager position right away but they mentioned background check and I got nervous so said no. Well I hate to disappoint you but the next few years weren”t exactly unsuccessful. Of course just about everything I touched I screwed up eventually. That”s the thing for those that know that not everyone in life is going to be successful.
Things start off good, but like a piece of fruit that looks nice on the outside and is rotten on the inside… well you know what I mean. Anyway, I worked two jobs and bought a nice bike I was riding some Peewee Herman bike prior to that. Soon enough I saved up some more and bought a car. I must say it was thrilling to drive a car for the first time in 10 years. Before I went to prison my license was revoked for 5 years. Honestly I was a good driver, but the state of Massachusetts had other ideas of what qualified someone as a good driver.
Well finally I quit the fast food joint and my second job at Marshalls By the way you want to know where those that aren’t successful in life end up? Yep Marshalls. I mean those people who ended up there working for $6 an hour at the age of 50 were not pleasant to be around. I then got a job delivering food in a very affluent area where those that do end up successful live. For Pete’s sake though, if you live in a 2 million dollar home can you give more than $2 tip on a $60 delivery? Cheap bastards. Talk about kicking a man when he”s down.
I ended up going to school and was still full of hope and believe it or not had some type of plans on being successful. Things even turned real good for a while. I made a small amount of money playing lotto and bought myself a condo. I went through several jobs always one better than the one before it. Ironically one of them was a driving instructor which considering my driving habits was something. I am not religious, I didn”t find God in Prison but in a way I found this to be some sort of punishment. I mean I quit school at the age of 16 because I wanted to drive around and now here I was teaching 16 year olds how to drive.
It”s almost like, “this is what you wanted here you go”. As all good thing must eventually come to an end, one day on the way to the office I found myself driving right past where the office was. Where was I going? Who knows? I just kept thinking that the paperwork I was going to do that day was the same as I had done the day before and the same that I would be doing the next day. It’s still about biding your time, I do understand the concept now, but there are those in life that know the path to take without being capable of following it themselves.
Of course everyone was extremely disappointed in me that I had done that. The same question of “why do you do such things when you have so much capability”? Always the same question, it never changes; only the people asking it change. And just as the question never changes, neither does the answer. I just turn my head away, look down and mumble – I’m sorry but not everyone in life is going to be successful. Usually that meets with silence, after all there”s not much more to say after that.
