We've all been in one at least once or twice in our life. We see a guy or girl in one of those bright greenish-yellow or orange vests holding that turnable sign that has slow on one side and stop on the other. You always see that the workers are working on something but every time you pass through it looks like nothing changed from the last time. What makes matter worse is that it lasts for what seems like years! I see no change in that area but whatever it is my grandkids are stopped by the same workers years afterwards. Everybody hates waiting. Whoever does must be an old person with way too much times on their hands to even give a crap. I wish I had patience just like those kinds of old people but I won't be old until at least 30 years from now so I'll just wait then. But those construction projects that is especially annoying are the ones where you have to follow a bunch of detour signs just to get back to where you were going. The detour makes a 5 minute trip into an hour and 15min trip that takes you to sketchy neighborhoods or spooky woods where you swear monsters like Freddy Krueger and that Ring girl go to have camping trips. This is your life throwing you a curveball that takes you off course from your original plan.
For me, I thought my road would be a little rocky but for the most part smooth and controllable. That didn't work out which is evidenced by this post's whole point. I spent all of high school as that guy who everybody liked and thought was funny but I never really fit into any groups. I definitely wasn't athletic so those sports groups wasn't up for debate. I made good grades but the nerdy groups would get wilder than a party at Charlie Sheen's house. I couldn't even fit in with the loner kids because where way too loner for me. Not to mention at home I lived with 3 teenaged girl, a boy that was 5 years younger than me, and three adults with two of those over the age of 50. With my extended family, I was born into that weird gap where I had like two cousins the same age as me but lived too far to hang with and everybody else was either preteen girls or 7 years older than I was. To make a long story short, I felt like I didn't fit anywhere.
Detour #1: Main road to finding a group of people who I could fit in with has detoured me to the desert of I Fit In Better with A Group of Balloons Than Actual People. I'm pretty sure that desert is in the middle of New Mexico.
So, when it came time to graduate from high school, this guy would have rather fart in the principal's face and flipped off the school towards the sunset than to sit during my graduation but somehow I made it through. I decided that I needed a big change to get things going for me. Instead of being the introverted, scared to talk to strangers and babies kid I've always been, I wanted to become a social butterfly that had too many friends to count and went to parties and other stuff stereotypical teenagers did. My first day of college was horrifying! I'm 2 hours away from home, I'm like 4 counties over, and worst of all: I FORGOT HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS!!!!! How in the crap do you do that? Like, I really needed a manual, help form Stephen Hawkins, and one of those Friendships for Dummies books. The struggle was that real. I mean, I made new friends before of course. It's just that this time I didn't have my old friends to fall on. I was in a new town that had nobody I knew.
It's hard for an introverted person to suddenly become outgoing out of nowhere. I'm not going to be all happy and randomly go to a random person and strike up a convo when I've actively avoided anybody who I didn't live with for the first 2 decades of my life. Not gonna happen. So it was kinda rough the first couple of months. I just woke up, went to class, grabbed something to eat, and went straight to my dorm room to watch tv. I was even in a learning community of campus where we all had the same majors but even then I never really made an effort to get to know them. I had plenty of opportunities to do so but once again, my introvetedness slapped me in my face and told me to get lost. Veeerrry uneventful college experience right off the bat.
Detour #2: Main road to trying to become the complete opposite of me has detoured me to the swamp of The Lone Alligator Who Drinks Nothing But 4 Bottles of Sierra Mist Everyday. Just a black skinned alligator ruining his kidneys and watching cartoons all day.
Things final changed when I needed a ride to get to a haunted trail that my learning community did every year around Halloween. I didn't have a car but I lucked up when a girl I occasionally talked to in the halls of my dorm saw me and offered a ride. I gladly accepted and then a friendship happened between me, her, and the guy in the backseat at the time. From then on, their connection lead me to make even more friends who became the group I would always hang out with and became my "sisters" and "brothers".
Detour #3: My previous detour that lead me to The Lone Alligator Swamp lead me back onto the main road of finding a group of people that I fit in with. I even had an identity within our group which was being the Token Black Guy which I've always been so it didn't bother me. Black people questions would arise every now and then but it's expected with the Token Black Guy.
Everything seemed to be going great for me. I made more connections with other people, not as strong as I wanted them to be but it was better than what it was before. I even joined a couple of clubs I liked and in one I was steadily climbing the ladder to being President. Everything went crumbling down the summer before my junior year. The worst detour I've encountered so far: the sea of Being Forced Out Of College. DUN DUN DUUUUUN!!!
TO BE CONTINUED
