Loser

Preface

People are quick to warn you that you can be a loser when you're in high school. Every single day, all they tell you is not to do this, not to do that, don't talk to her, don't date him, don't wear your hair like that, don't join that club or have that interest or do anything special. And I believe that there was a special kind of loser for people who were doomed to be in Colorado for the rest of their lives, to work at a high school or a coffee shop or as a pool cleaner. Of course, there was nothing wrong with these professions, as long as you left high school to do them.

There was probably a sense of child-like stupidity in what I did. I came to New York City thinking that I could be the next best thing. I thought that I would be the next breakout star, that I would just show up and everyone would instantly recognize my talent. I thought that I would just step off of the train from the airport and I would get picked up by some big Broadway show, that someone would swoon into my arms and we would get married that morning, maybe have two or three or ten kids and I could settle down with my beautiful partner in my beautiful house in the gorgeous suburbs of New York where I had bought a house with my millions of dollars from shows and that I would be happy. And I would rub in the face of every single person who ever told me that I would wind up a loser that I was cool and they were not.

I'm still not sure where I messed up in between my dream and reality. Perhaps I grew up and realized that my dream was stupid and childlike. And so I became a kindergarten music teacher. Teaching music wasn't a bad job. It paid well enough for one person to live off of in the apartment that I did. And I loved the students in my class. They were always so responsive, so ready to learn. Sometimes, as I was watching them talk to each other in their soft, innocent, child-like way, I wondered if anyone warned them that they could turn into losers. I wondered if New York losers even existed.

The best lesson I could ever teach them was one that was not taught. People were quick to warn you that you can be a loser when you're in high school. No one ever warned you that you could be a loser when you graduate high school. That's possibly the worst kind of loser that you could be. High school only lasted for four years, the worst you could do is be slammed into lockers every day for four years and then graduate and then you're gone. When you're in New York and you're a loser, well. Let's just say that it's very hard to break a routine once it's started.

There was a certain bitter sweetness to coming back home for Christmas. On one hand, it was the one time of year when you could come stay with your parents for a week and no one would accuse you of being a loser who was moving back in with their parents. On the other hand, you had to see everyone you grew up with. Being a loser in high school was hard enough,but coming back after being a New York loser, only to relive your "glory days"as high school loser was not fun, to say the least.