Marco

Monday, September 5th, 1983. 11:39 a.m.

It's almost a half hour to midnight, and I just crept out of my bedroom window, which was on the first floor. I'm running out to the bridge not far away from the pool. I've done it lots of times, and I'm doing it again.

This is something I always do on the day before my birthday, the first night of summer, and the last night of summer. I always go there to climb up those bad steel blocks that go up diagonally on the pedestrian bridge. I don't know why I do it. I guess it's just for fun. It's kind of awesome in a way that shows how bad to the bone I am.

First, I have to make my way through a lot of college students, chocoholics, and bimbettes before I get there. The warm wind blows in my face as I jog up to the pedestrian bridge. As soon as I reach up to the edge of the pedestrian bridge, I slow to a walk and take some breaths. Normally, I'm stressed over time I'm not worried about not getting home in time because the bridge is only ten minutes away from my parent's bungalow.

I walk up to a steel bar and begin scaling up. It's really not that hard because I've done it before. It's probably also because I'm not a couch potato like my sister Kandyce. She's a bit of a dipstick and she haves a cow a lot. Dad kicked her out so many times during summer I can't even count. It doesn't help that she's also really grody and ill. She's what Daria calls a joanie.

Speaking of Daria, when I get to the top, I sit down and start thinking about the last time I saw her. She and that dweeb-o-rama Aly were having ice cream, and I heard her sing some Michael Jackson song. I went up to her and said, "You have a really mint voice. You're like way too phat too hang out with that scumbag Aly."

I don't get why she thought I was some bogus. She even called me an airhead to my face. Guess she can't accept dudes who tell it like it is.

Keeping this in mind, I look up to the sky and promise myself that I will figure out how to make her chill out with me at one point or another during the school year. Once I speak my promise, I climb down and start walking back home. As I'm reaching the end of the bridge, a chocoholic comes up to me and starts saying something. I really can't tell what he's saying because his words are so slurred. I stumble pass him and run back home as quick as possible. When I get there, I hoist myself up and get into my bedroom. I throw off my rugby shirt and my corduroy pants and put on my pajamas. Next, I climb into bed and fall asleep once my head hits the pillow.

Cass

Tuesday, September 6th, 1983. 4:00 pm

"How was school?" Aunt Marie asked as I put my bag on the couch.

"Dab ton," I said, sitting down next to it. I ran my fingers through my hair and my head tilted to the side.

"Good grief, Cassius. You should be past that 'Backwardish' thing by now." I could practically feel Aunt Marie's disapproval radiating. She was always like, "Cassius, don't go and eat half a dozen a donuts at once. Cassius, quit the TV and do your homework. Cassius, you should be talking to us at dinner. Cassius, this. Cassius, that, yadda yadda yadda." She was like that with Eloise as well. Same with Uncle Bernie. I thought they were really overbearing, but looking back now, it might have been because they weren't actually my aunt and uncle, but my mom's aunt and uncle. Back in 1983, they were both seventy-two. That was around thirty-three years ago.

I sighed. Eloise was upstairs with her friend Minnie, and they were playing Dungeon Dice. I don't really remember the rules, but I do know I played that game when I was nine years old, which was the same age Eloise was now. She had her ninth birthday back in May. I had my thirteenth birthday in July, and my rad old friend Jack had his two weeks ago. I know it's hard to believe it, but back then, he was always shitting bricks around new people. Pretty nervous guy. Not very confident.

He's still is like that sometimes. Then again, who can blame him? If you grew up with the parents he had...

6:00 pm

"Do I have to eat every bite?" Eloise moaned. She was like this every time we had a meal involving meat.

"Yes, missy," Uncle Bernie said, always being strict. We had mashed potatoes and chicken for dinner today, as we always did on Tuesdays. Eloise hated eating chicken because she felt like a cannibal, which was probably an omen. She became a vegetarian once she moved out of the house nine years later. "Otherwise when you go to school, you come back home when it's over for the rest of the year."

He was not kidding about that. I warned Eloise that I learned the hard way when I was five years old. I'd just been taken out of my parents' custody and put into Aunt Marie and Uncle Bernie's. First dinner there, I threw my broccoli halfway across the room. Got a pretty good spanking, I did. Never threw broccoli across the room again. I always ate it, even if I didn't want to.

Eloise rolled her eyes and began to take a bite out of her chicken. I was close to being done my food, which I always hated, because that meant when I was done, it would be straight to homework. Aunt Marie and Uncle Bernie always nagged me to do well in school, even though most folks would never think I was a dweeb like Jack and Aly back then. (Dweeb is 80s slang for nerd.) I think that was because Mom got pregnant with me in her final year of high school, and she had the grades to make it into university. If she hadn't gotten pregnant with me, she would have been the first in our family to go. Never happened, it did. Wanted me to go in order to make up for it.

That's part of the story of how I became the first member in my family to go to university. Eloise went as well. We both got degrees in science.

There was always something I found funny about people who tell stories about when they were growing up is that they don't tell the bad parts of their childhood. I don't think they like to remember it. I see that with these kids who wish they grew up in 1983 because they just liked the music.

Truth is, growing up in 1983 wasn't all bad, but it wasn't all good either. I think it wouldn't be so different from today except we actually talked to each other back then, and most of us lived in bungalows, which meant no second floor. That also meant we would be living in houses that ran more on gas than electricity.

Anyhow, as soon as I finished my food, I was sent straight to my bedroom, where I spent two and a half hours hours doing homework and checking everything to make sure it was correct. As soon as I saw the clock read 8:30, I put all my stuff away and went to the bathroom. 8:30 meant that it was time to get ready for bed, and 9:00 was bedtime ASAP, otherwise you'd be in deep shit with Aunt Marie. Maybe Uncle Bernie as well if he didn't have back pain that night. I began brushing my teeth and finished with rinsing my mouth and flossing, as I always did.