My parents had me when they were 20, still in college. If you can’t tell yet, I was an accident. Sometimes you just have to accept that, I take pride in knowing I am the primary reason my dad didn’t have a career as a running back in the NFL. Having young parents is odd, especially when all of your friend’s parents are twice as old and twice as rich. I love my parents, but I can honestly say they are the least responsible “adults” I have ever met in my life.

I was born June 29th, 1995 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I grew up in Bourne, a small town on Cape Cod. Whenever I tell people that I’m from the cape, they assume I’m rich. Believe me, I am not, I’d consider my family to be lower middle class. The rest of my town is predominately rich though, which was nice because most of my friends had rich families, so I would just mooch off of them. Cops are pretty much useless, because nothing bad really ever happens in my town, it almost seems fake. About 50% of houses in my town are summer houses. This makes for a crowded, lively and exciting summer. Then winter strikes and all of those houses become empty, we then turn into a boring ghost town. The one thing I truly never realized until I moved out of the town, was its lack of diversity. The population was pretty much 99.5% white. Since my town is so uniform and boring, everyone seems to insist upon being either a functioning alcoholic or complete pothead. You’re pretty much one or the other, or both. It’s like a strange family tradition, that everyone seems so oddly proud to carry on. Where this might be a problem in other places, the lack of sobriety appears to hold my town together and keep everyone happy. Luckily my parents never got too much into either and were able to give me a happy childhood.

My mom reminds me of the typical high school girl. If she isn’t watching a fashion related reality show, she is giggling and tapping away at her iPhone. Often a parent may ask their child to put their phone away and talk face to face, not in my case. I have literally had to take my phone away from my mother, my MOTHER. I have disciplined my mom more times in my life, than she has me. Don’t get me wrong, she’s an amazing mom, very kind and caring, but she kind of needs to grow up. At the ripe age of 38, she still loves to party. Like more than I do, I’m almost positive she is more popular than me. She is always there for me and can tell when something is wrong, though she usually doesn’t know how. She has never forced me to do a thing in my life, no chores, homework or learning. Growing up it was great, but looking back on this, it makes me mad, I wish I was smart, or smarter at least. My mom raised me to hate men, the usual approach of the single mother. As you can imagine, her least favorite man was my dad.

My dad is also 38. He is best known in my town for his amazing football skills. Though it happened 20 years ago, you would’ve thought it happened yesterday, since he talks about it every day. He has pretty much given me the play by play of every major football game in his short high school-college career. Apparently he was being scouted by a professional football team, until I was born and of course personally forced him quit. Obviously I was trying to ruin his football career, why else would I have been born. He still holds a grudge against me today. My father has been making fun of me non-stop since I could speak, probably before that too. Which is great, because I never get in trouble, I just get made fun of. One time when I was like 12, I broke a window due to a wild baseball throw. Most dads would yell and ask “How are we going to pay for this window?!” Not my dad. He just made fun of the softness of my hands, because of my lack of physical work and called me a “p**sy”. It doesn’t help that he was in the military from what I remember as 1st to 8th grade. He learned how to make fun of people professionally as a drill sergeant, lucky me. Though him being in the army meant I was left with my nice, respectful mother for most of my life, it’s kind of nice having the other realm to. He’s always honest with me and not afraid to hurt my feelings, no like really not afraid….actually he might prefer it. It may sound weird, but my parents are more like my older siblings than parents.

My mom and dad hated each other with a fiery passion, up until recently. They used to argue and fight constantly, now they’re friends which just weirds me out. One night they hung out and my dad stayed at my mom’s house. I happened to be at my dad’s house that night, not knowing where he was I called him the next day to ask where he had been. He answered “I stayed at your mom’s house!” then laughed as if to insinuate something, because he has the maturity level of a 5 year old. I’m convinced they just hang out and talk about ways to annoy me. That is something they share in common, their love for pissing me off. My mom does it through treating me like a baby, while my dad does it through making fun of me for being treated like a baby. Mom always still refers to me as “my little boy”, “Honey” and “Baby boy” (I’m 6 inches taller than her, I’m also 18). Dad seems to think I have way too easy of a life, so he tries to make it a little harder by constantly taunting me. At this point I’m immune to his childish insults, I can even throw them back now. For no reason, out of nowhere, my dad will make fun of me for being a scrawny, weakling and I’ll just tell him he’s short and fat. We both just laugh it off and go on our ways. As much as they like to get on my nerves, I love my childish parents. Since my parents were young, I luckily had younger grandparents who were fit to raise children.

Grandparents seem for most people to be older and distant, but I lived with mine, both with my dad and his father, as well as my mom and her father, separate houses of course. My two houses were separated by a canal, about fifteen minutes apart in the town of Bourne. I’m sure you have no idea where that is, but we are the doorstep to Cape Cod and are split by a canal. Nobody ever seemed willing to drive over the bridge, to get me from house to house, but my grandparents. They are generous, good people. My dad’s mother and father, were more my mother and father, than…well my actual mother and father, if you follow. So my actual father and I are more buds, than father and son. We hang out and make fun of each other, while my grandmother makes us dinner. Being raised by old people probably explains my obsession with Golf and why people always tell me that I act like an old man, like my parents for example. I have had to call them at night to making sure they stay safe and make smart decisions. My dad always replies with his stupid “What are you, my mom?” comments and mom tells me to stop worrying, she’s responsible enough to be out on her own (which she is not) Now that I think of it, my parents are practically my kids. I have to watch after them, since they still insist upon acting like high schoolers. I actually can’t say I consider it to be a bad upbringing, since I have learned how to be responsible on my own.

Being a single child, I naturally grew up with dogs. I have two dogs, Lacy and Rowdy. They are little Jack Russell terriers and I love them like family. They pretty much played my surrogate brother and sister, thank god because I couldn’t stand other kids. I’m the kind of guy who likes to hang around with his dogs, I don’t really need people. I enjoy the company of other people, but being a single child has taught me how to entertain myself on my own. People always think it’s weird that I can sit around by myself, not doing anything and enjoy my time. I find it awesome, because even when I’m alone, I still have me and who’s better than me? Luckily, I was never alone that often. I had a lot of friends throughout school, I was always the funny fat kid. In my senior year of high school I lost 70 pounds, which was pretty awesome.

Losing 70 pounds in less than a year is crazy. None of my old clothes fit me, I went from extra, extra larges to mediums. Nobody tells you how expensive losing weight is, I had to buy all new clothes. I did notice some differences between being chubby and normal. I miss the temperature regulation of fat, I used to always be warm and now I am constantly cold, due to my lack of insulation. I’ve been told I’m less funny now that I’m in shape, now people just look at me with a confused face when I make fat jokes about myself. People don’t understand that I was big boned for 17 years, I forget all the time that I’m not huge now. I’ll walk by a mirror and be like “Wow, is that me?” Occasionally a friend will call me “Fat Max” out of old habit and we always get a good laugh out of it. I like to think that tubby me would be proud of who I became and worked to be.

Up to this point my life has been fun, unique and fulfilling. Going to College is my next big step, I’m attending a university for a degree in Marketing. My parents have yet to spend any money on my schooling and it has successfully drained my bank account. Hopefully I can graduate get a job and have children of my own to annoy someday. I feel like all the crap I’ve dealt with in my childhood has better prepared me for all of the crap that adulthood has to offer and I look forward to finding out.