A Life Foolishly Lived :: Personal Narrative Essays

A Life Foolishly Lived I've never quite understood the whole racism thing. I grew up in suburbia, but in the part of town considered the black neighborhood. When I was younger black kids were no different from everyone else, and I was happy that way. It wasn't until middle school and my encounters with Joey that I became aware of a difference. I was young and impressionable, and totally bought into what anyone who would consider me "cool" was saying. Joey was a 30-something-year-old quadriplegic man who lived near me. I was considered a nerd and felt desperate for guidance of some sort. Joey became my mentor. Before the accident that left him in a wheelchair, he was a rocker, and I spent hours by his side listening to his stories. "I tell you, Owen, I had it all. And the girls loved me," he would tell me, while I emptied the bag of urine strapped to his leg. Even though he never graduated from high school, had no job, would get drunk and stoned all the time, and lived with his parents, I wanted to be just like the person he used to be. He'd had girlfriends and lived the rock-and-roll lifestyle, but that ended when he was pushed off a porch and snapped his neck. He attempted to continue his old life through kids in the neighborhood. Joey would tell us how he used to make pipe bombs, so naturally we had to make a bomb and blow up a chunk of the street. But we didn't have the know-how or the supplies to make a pipe bomb, so a gallon of gasoline would have to do the trick. Sadly, we picked a bad place and set a man's lawn on fire. The police and firemen were on my street that night, putting out seven-foot high flames and asking questions. Even though nobody knew exactly who blew off the gas bomb, most had an idea. I'm sure people in that neighborhood could think only of Wheelchair Joey and his gang of misled youth. Joey listened to heavy metal and sported Charles Manson and Confederate flag t-shirts. Before I knew it, I was doing the same. He convinced me to wear the flag shirt in school the day we watched "Roots" for Black History Month. We laughed when I told him about the reactions I got, and then he congratulated me with a beer and some vodka mixed with juice.