My morning was fine until I was about to leave. Dad said, “You look handsome, but you should tuck in your shirt, son.”—it is May and throughout the year I had never left my trousers without an overhang to cover me. With his sudden help, my shirt was neatly slid under my belt. It wasn’t twisted, it was perfectly comfortable and even looked quite smart. I looked in the landscape mirror beside the front door and did a tippy-toed twist. This conjured images of the other boys, their uncurtained trousers that fit them as a uniform should. I swapped myself for them.
I untucked my shirt and grumbled complaints to myself as I walked down the driveway.
My ride on the DART was fine too, until just about every child in Dublin hopped on my carriage. Their little feet rumbled the floor like a giant’s. I had to turn up my phone to near maximum volume to drown out their chirps and squeals and screeches. Three boys surrounded me. The one who sat beside me made a joke awkwardly to the others. It had a similar energy to how I’d try to talk at his age. He looked the part too.
Mum suggested I could go to a teens’ meetup and make local friends. I, still to this day adamant that none of my friends live near me, asked if anyone there would be like me. She replied “Yes” and I asked how they were like me. My memory discarded the answer. I think it was my fault for not being more specific, not hers.
I looked at myself in the vertical mirror and did a tippy-toed twist. I was wearing my black jeans and my brown shirt (my other shirt was in laundry purgatory) and trying to decide how I felt about how I looked at that moment. If I moved or posed this way, I’d appear to have that shape; if I adjusted or tucked it that way my s irt would look like this.
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