With This One

Chapter Five

It had been a week since summer vacation had started for the students and the teachers.  Other than the warmer weather, it was quite obvious that it had begun when I went shopping that following weekend for little odds and ends that I could take with me to England.  Many teen girls were out shopping with their friends dressed in the most revealing choice of clothes.  It boggled my mind as to how the girls felt so comfortable exposing themselves like that in front of everyone!

I thought back to my teen years in the 90’s.  High waisted jeans, colourful baggy jackets and the odd choice of footwear, the teens of my era were fully clothed, not exposing themselves like the teens were today.

But through the years I have learned that everything leads back to the parents.  Sure, when I was growing up there were the teens that went against everyone and wore skimpy clothing, but they were the people whose parents had a lot of money and didn’t exactly care what their child was doing, unlike how things were with my dad.  My dad only allowed me to wear a certain type of clothing; plain jeans, a simple t-shirt and a nice pair of trainers.  At the time I didn’t understand why my dad wouldn’t let me have what everyone else was wearing, but now looking back, it was to make me stand out, to be different, to be me.

I remember the many conversations that I would have with him, begging and pleading for the same thing someone else had, but every time I would, I’d get the same sort of response.

“Amelia, I don’t want you dressing the same as everyone else,” he would say looking through work papers or even just at the TV.

“But dad,” I would plea, over and over again.

He would huff and then chuckle a little only to say, “Sweetheart, come here.”

I’d walk over to wherever he was sitting and join him, waiting for him to continue.

“If you were to start dressing like them then you would turn into someone else and I don’t want you being anyone different.  I like you being Amelia.”

Now at the time, I was in my early teens, twelve or thirteen even and this would become my main worry, the only thing on my mind.  I would stay up imaging the different scenarios of what my life would be like if I had the same shoes as a certain girl.  Would I become popular like her?  Have as many friends as her?  But I didn’t know back then that shoes wouldn’t make me into a different person, it would be the way I acted with the shoes on, and that’s what my dad was trying to avoid.  Who knows what would have happened if I were to have gotten the same things as everyone and started acting different?  Would I still be the same person I am today or would I be a different person who wore the same things as everyone and fell under the peer pressure?  My dad had saved me from something that I possibly wouldn’t have wanted to be, now looking back as an adult.

He had saved me from a lot of things, some things I was too young to protect myself and others he would save me from future pain and heartbreak.

When I was sixteen I, like many other girls at the time got their first boyfriend.  His name was Ethan, tall with blonde hair, hazel eyes with a bit of a crooked nose, he was a guy that many other girls had crushes on, as did I and for some reason he liked me back.  Once Ethan and I began dating the news spread through the school like wild fire and soon everyone was looking at us as we walked down the halls during lunch.  It was something I wasn’t used to, someone who was very antisocial throughout classes was being seen as a part of one of the “star couples” of the school.  This had led to being bullied.  It wasn’t something very noticeable to some, but to me it was the centre of my attention.  The girls who would pick on me were the ones that liked Ethan too, so they would find ways to throw things at me and put garbage into my gym locker.  I kept this from Ethan because I didn’t want him getting involved in it so I had just told my dad.  He had told me many times to speak to someone in the school about it but I would refuse and I made him promise that he wouldn’t do anything to interfere.