NANOWRIMO 2020

11.03 A Little Lost

Everybody was lying to him. Ryan didn't know much but he knew that as a fact. Everybody was lying to him. All his friends, all the adults in his life, his brother and sister, they were all lying to him, and he could tell.

They always pretended to know what they were doing, or even worse, pretended to be happy doing what they were doing, and Ryan hated that almost as much as he hated being lied to.

Ryan didn't really trust adults. Actually, Ryan didn't really trust anybody anymore. They kept telling him what to do or what to feel and he did not like being told what to do. They always passed it off as "being good for you" or him "being too young to understand" but if that was the case, when was he going to be allowed to decide what was good for himself? When would he stop being too young?

Ryan's dream was to be a grocer. He wanted to own his own little grocery store if he could, but he wanted to help people pick out their groceries and talk to them and bag their stuff. He really wanted to do that. He saw them at the store near his house and he thought it was so cool that they were allowed to talk to people all day and they got to see all the cool merchandise and even go into the back areas where he wasn't allowed to, but he stood at the door once when his mom was picking watermelons and waited for the grocery people to walk out and when they did he peered inside and saw boxes upon boxes upon boxes probably filled with stuff!

He wanted to open the boxes and talk to people. But apparently that wasn't good enough. He was supposed to want to be a doctor or a lawyer or the president but none of that sounded interesting. It sounded really boring to him. He heard it was a lot of homework and studying and he didn't like doing either one of those things. He always made a face in class when other students would go up and proudly proclaim their desires to be the number one veterinarian or actor or famous celebrity.

That all sounded like stuff their parents made them say. Even Ryan's mom had asked him if he really wanted to just be a grocer. "Why do you want to be like Mr. Park, Ryan? He works all day. He has to carry all those heavy boxes all the time. Don't you want to be a doctor? Or maybe a businessman?"

Ryan shook his head no every time and at some point his mom stopped asking him. She never said it to him, but she would gossip with her friends in the kitchen and make a flippant gesture with her hand and say "He's just going through a phase. Kids have stupid dreams sometimes, he'll grow out of it" to a chorus of slurred approval.

The first time Ryan heard that, he decided to stop telling grown ups about his dreams. They didn't know what they were doing anyways, who were they to tell him what he wanted or what he should do?

He actually felt bad for them. They all seemed a little lost to him, and they were trying to keep other people just as lost and confused as themselves so they wouldn't be so lonely. He felt bad for them so he didn't hate them for that, but he didn't like it.

Who were they to tell him his dreams didn't matter?

Besides, he liked Mr. Park. He was a nice old man, and he always gave Ryan ice creams whenever he stopped by to chat. He was always kind and watering the flowers in front of his store and even though Ryan knew the flowers didn't sell well, Mr. Park would always tend to them, and give them to anybody passing by who had had a bad day.

Truthfully, Ryan wanted to be like Mr. Park. He thought that being like Mr. Park would be a nice thing to do.