Early one morning, I ate breakfast with my usual rapidity, having woken up just in the nick of time to shower, inhale my food, and drive to school. Finding parking was going to be hell, but I guess that’s what I was bargaining with for my extra (and quite sacred) fifteen minutes of sleep. My shower lasted 7 minutes, a bit longer than necessary, but of course one cannot so easily turn away from a nice hot shower. I applied the necessary cosmetics (deodorant, cologne), and entered the kitchen where my Mom was awake and washing dishes. The bread maker droned on at regular intervals in the corner, and the morning news chirped away from a distance.
“Good morning,” she said pleasantly. The bread machine whirred.
“Mm.” I grunted, only half awake. It seemed like the thing to say, or rather, the thing to brutishly expostulate. Heaven forbid I make pleasant conversation with my own mother before school.
I poured myself a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats, with their tendency both to please and disgust. They were the ultimate breakfast chimera, and I wondered how the board meeting had gone at their proposal some years ago. “Mr. Hamilton, we really like your idea, but two sides of frosting? We need something that the kids will like, but we need something their parents will buy, too.” And poor Mr. Hamilton never realized his dream of a doubly frosted mini-wheat.
As my mind drifted, the television was there to catch it. A story came on about a man who broke into a house, raped an 11 year old girl while her parents slept, and ran away. My initial reaction, I’m sorry to say, was indifference. Terrible things like that happen so frequently, how can we do anything but distance ourselves from them? But that was just my initial reaction. Then I saw the description of the man. I didn't catch the majority of it because my eyes were held fast by the top line: age: 18-20.
I realized that my birthday was coming up in a few days. 18. One of the big years. One of the years that my peers at school used to start buying cigarettes, or playboy magazines, or things from TV infomercials, or lotto tickets. I was interested in none of those things, as would be expected if you knew me. But even more, I was uninterested because I was struggling with the realization that, in a few day’s time, I could plausibly fit the profile of a rapist. A murderer. A thief. Any number of names you could give, and I could feasibly fit the profile of any of them.
Somewhere, a man my age had raped an 11 year old girl, and left her with the weight of that reality. And I, waiting to turn 18, was horrified.
Damn that's powerful dude...
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