This is the first chapter of my young adult novel Please Be Mind. For more information about the book, click here.
This is the beginning of the book.
Click here to listen to me reading this chapter.
Click here to read the PDF version of this chapter.
Do you have a best friend?
Do you have any friends?
For a year and a half, I had no friends at all. No one looked at me in the hallways, and no one sat with me at lunch. For a guy of my particular genre, a lack of friends is almost as common a wallet chain. Our mission is to be rebels, to be different. To rouse a stir across the schoolyard, and astonish with our individuality.
But what if no one cares that you’re not like them? What if they look right past your black hair and nail-polish, like you’re just a stagehand in a life-sized play?
The halls of high-schools are ruthless not because we students are any more manipulative and sadistic than the adults we become, but because we are so utterly vulnerable. As students, we are still forming our beliefs about the world and its inhabitants. We are thrown into a snake-pit of other students, all grasping for attention and definition, just like us. The result is more dramatic than a soap opera.
Where are our role models? What access do we have to examples of positive adult relationships? Television? Nope. Movies? Hell no. The mall on weekends? Doubt it.
Blaming younger people for increased violence and reduced respect for authority is a foolish displacement. The responsibility lies in the adults. With each new generation, additional layers of emotional dysfunctions and tendencies are passed down. The result is now.
In a few moments you will read what is more or less the life story of my best friend. His story is one of adaptation, of accepting what is and moving forward.
I would not be so bold as to urge you to be like him, but rather to emulate his spirit. To use his lessons, his patterns of thought, and to let his strength inspire your own way of living.
Though I probably should have, I did not write this book. My good friend David Shane did. I am merely the announcer, the warm-up band, now…
…Enjoy the main act.
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