Guilty pleasuremature

Guilty pleasure

The first time that I remember being guilty was a troubling time for me. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, the right path and the wrong path, heaven or hell. I was caught in limbo and I didn't know how to break free. My mother had just died two years earlier and I didn't exactly know how to cope with her loss. Her death hit me like I just got run over by a ford f1-50 truck.

My school work was beyond my fathers standards. He praised me every chance he got. My teachers were the same way. It was like I could do no wrong. I had Perfect grades, perfect attendance, and a perfect attitude. It was like I lived in Pleasant-ville, but my neighborhood was far from that fantasy.

In my neighborhood you didn't just earn respect, you had to command it like a general commands his troops to the front-lines. Needless to say, my neighborhood was as rough as Captain Crunch cereal scraping the roof of your mouth.

I was a very short and skinny guy so I got picked on a lot through the first year of elementary school. I felt like I had to become extra hardened because I was short and stick thin. I would often try to make an example out of people who bothered me or my sisters. In my mind that made me stronger as a person.

The first time that I ever felt guilty stems from the first time I ever considered myself to be even the least bit dangerous. One day at school my friends and I were all sitting at the lunch table cracking jokes on each other. That was our normal lunch routine.

The jokes were coming hard and fast like a 100 mile an hour fastball thrown by the best of pitchers. The subject turned to joking about mothers so, I backed out. Everyone knew why. They knew that my mother had died and that I was still trying getting over it.

Even in knowing that fact, one of my best friends had to slip up and talk about my mother. Other friends tried to calm him down but he just kept talking, and talking. After the jokes subsided there was an eerie silence at the table, time stood still and we were the only ones moving, thinking, and speaking.

He finally realized what he had done. He tried to apologize to me, but the damage had been done. He apologized all day trying to make me listen, but I didn't speak. I was silent, plotting, waiting, and infuriated by his ignorance and unsympathetic actions.

I was hell-bent on making him an example. Nobody knew how bad it hurt me to hear one of my so called friends talk about my deceased mother with such disrespect. I went home to contemplate what his punishment would be as if I was a father deciding his child's fate. I though long and hard and finally I came up with the perfect plan.