• The wind carried the crisp, rattling leaves past my face and towards the East. On its way, the cool autumn air smacked my face, and the trees seemed to sway down, as if they were bending over, and shake their branches at me like a lady shakes her finger at a troublemaking boy. The grass leaned my way, and the sky rested on my shoulders, along with the rest of the world.
    From the high hill I sat on with my chaotic home behind me, I gazed down at the rest of the neighborhood; There were happy homes with giggling, screaming children chasing one-another with the hose, squirting it at their faces. Instead of becoming angry with the city water squirting into their bright, blue eyes, they only giggled and scratched their rosy cheeks on their pale faces. The parents were sitting around a wooden picnic table on the patio with a red-and-white checkered cloth over the top. They talked about business and complained and whined childishly about their “Up-tight” bosses in a hushed tone, so that they could shield their wild, hyperactive children from everything in the world that wasn’t Dora The Explorer or 5x3=15. That’s what all parents did. They hid the world from their kids, and when they grew up to such things like drugs, it was the biggest and most complex deal in all of their child, preteen, and teenager experience. So they go for it because it’s the biggest thing ever and they just are so curious and have never seen or known such a major thing before that was at all negative. They’re wondering about it, and before you know it, your one rosy-cheeked sweetheart is a pothead.