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We were all sitting around the table; me, my 10 year old brother, my mom and dad, eating spaghetti, which was not one of my favorite meals. I stared at it, poking at it with my fork and taking slow and small bites. Staring down at my plate, my mind wandered and thought about random things like it always did when I was bored. My mom, to my right, started a conversation to fill the awkward silence.
“So, have you thought about plans for your birthday?” she asked me, “July 8th isn’t that far away.”
I look up and at her. “No, I haven’t really thought about it.” I said in a bored tone. Didn’t she realize I had my finals coming up? Or did she not listen to me when I told her the dates of my tests?
My brother butted his way into the conversation. “Maybe we should just skip your birthday.” He said like it would be no problem at all, like it wouldn’t matter if we just didn’t celebrate my birthday.
I don’t know what angered me more at that moment; my mother ignoring his comment or yelling at me when I said we should skip his birthday. I gave her a semi glaring look and she turned to my brother, only then did she tell him to apologize as well.
I looked back at my plate, face blank as I thought about what we did for my brother’s last birthday. I had no idea why that came up in my mind. Looking back, the normal thing would to think about my past birthday.
His birthday was in December, December 15th to be exact. He wanted to go to this chucky-cheese type of place. It had an arcade, laser tag, and two indoor pools. By the way he described it, it sounded like it would be a busy, popular place. Boy, talk about misguided assumptions…
We went there two weeks after his actual birthday. The first time we went, they were closed due to a plumbing problem. I thought nothing of it, thinking they may have frozen pipes or what-not. It was a 45 minute drive to there, so if they did have frozen pipes, it wouldn’t have reached us. At least that’s what I told myself.
As we entered, I couldn’t believe how crummy the place was. I looked over at my brother, surprised that he could see past the mostly broken arcade games and the cheap Lasertron knock-off. We picked our table, setting our stuff down, and my whole family played laser tag; parents vs. kids. I got frustrated after running into the maze like walls again and again, as well as being constantly attacked by my mother, and I decided I wouldn’t play again after that.
My brother decided he wanted to swim, and we all went down to the indoor pools, it was unbelievably stuffy in there. One pool was a kiddy pool; one foot deep and with a little water playground in it. The other pool was a normal one, going from 3 feet at one end to 5 feet deep on the other. The pool deck had cheep tables and cruddy plastic lawn chairs, stained with who knows what. I pulled out a chair, more roughly than needed. I don’t remember why, but I was pissed or depressed about something. I sat on the right side of the table while my parents sat on the left, right next to the wall. I rested my head on my hand as I stared at my brother doing cannonballs into the pool. My mom asked me for the 7th time if I was sure that I didn’t want to swim. I huffed and said “Yes” rather rudely, but I didn’t care.
My brother came up from the pool and ran up to me when he saw that I wasn’t swimming or dong anything at all. He smiled, dripping water all over the pool deck.
“Are you having fun?” he asked genuinely excited. I had several answers that I wanted to say, but knowing what my parents would do, I lied.
“Yep, lots of fun.” I said, smiling my fake smile. He smiled bigger and jumped back into the pool. As he left, my smile fell back to that dead expression as I focused on whatever was bothering me.
<< continued tomarro >>
 · Sun Jun 07, 2009 @ 08:09pm · 0 Comments |
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