Renny Boy

Ever since New Year’s Day came around, I kept my New Year’s resolution in the back of my mind.

I wanted to do something big.

I was sick and tired of being just another kid in blue jeans and a t-shirt. I just wanted to stand out and get noticed somehow - I couldn’t care less if it was positive or negative; I was truly that desperate.

But, you know, there’s always a catch…and here laid the problem: I wasn’t what you would call a "social butterfly.”

I was just the quiet kid who sat in the back of class, working alone on every single assignment. You know the kind. That loser kid who never talked to anybody.

And before you say “Oh, your parents must’ve been just like you!” then let me kill your theory with this – you are wrong. My mom and my dad could spark up a conversation with anybody they pleased. Not even kidding.

My mom’s a bit crazy to me sometimes, but I still love her, even if she calls me embarrassing names like “sugarcakes” or “loveybuns.” (Those are two things you never want to hear a parent shouting from the window when they drop you off at school.) She was also a music teacher at the local elementary school. My dad was a guitar and drums teacher, so he got along with his students and their parents. Me? I was so antisocial none of the kids at my school even knew my name even though I’ve lived in the same place all my life. My parents blamed themselves for not getting me socially involved with some kind of activity when I was, like, fresh outta the womb. Kinda sad, really.

I say, who cares if I was shy or not. All that mattered was that I got ahead in life. I did fine in school, all A’s and B’s. I wasn’t stupid. Well…nobody really knew that, since I never raised my hand in class to display my obvious brilliance…I never knew what it’s like to have a partner-in-crime, though, like all those kids I saw in the hallways walking with each other, and sometimes I got a little lonely.

Ha.

Who knew a kid like me wanted to hit it big somehow?

Okay, yeah. First things first. My parents named me Ren, like they just wanted heads to turn whenever they called me. People like my name, but I’m stumped as to why. I guess it sounds “exotic” or something, even though there’s nothing really special about me. You can blame my mom for giving me a dumb name. Although, what do you expect from a lady named Skye? Stupid names can get passed on for generations. She probably didn’t have any idea that her son would always get asked “Where’s Stimpy?” when people meet him for the first time.

I know what you’re thinking right now. We’re not even a full page into this story and I can tell. “Why am I reading a book about some loser kid with a normal family?” Well, here’s an answer for you: My family lives music. We breathe music. We play music. We…love music. My dad’s a heavy metal madman, rocking out to the Stones or Sabbath, and my mom’s into cultural foreign music that I think is kind of creepy. (And Björk. Lots of Björk.)

And as my family lives music, I live music too. I’d tried my share of musical instruments – hell, even the bagpipes felt my talentless wrath (my dad had every freakin’ instrument you could think of) – and failed miserably with every single one. My fingers weren’t agile, I didn’t have stamina, and none of them shivered my timbers. I’m pretty much a failure at anything I don’t fling myself at wholeheartedly.

I kinda liked singing, though. I’d started getting into it back in elementary school and shoved it aside for bigger things once fourth or fifth grade swung around (I guess I’ll explain why later since I hate dumping all this crap on you all at once), but as I grew and got into different kinds of music I wanted back in.

As if I wasn’t enough of an outcast. Really. What kind of self-respecting dude sings for fun? (You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that.)

So I guess we all kind of rocked out to our own style, since my mom swoons that she and Dad met at a disco club in the nineties. Sounds like something out of a stupid movie…well anyways, music just ties all of us together, even though it seems as if we’re on different planets sometimes. As long as we’re doing what we love, we get along. It’s not like we were always arguing about who was the best guitarist/drummer/saxophonist/glockenspiel player on the planet, but we all just chilled out with our stereos on.

Well, I didn’t sing in public unless my life depended on it. It’s not that I didn’t like it; it’s just that I was a little embarrassed about it. Are you kidding? Suburban Florida? If word really got out that I kind of had a talent for it, I couldn’t say I’d do anything about it, because I couldn’t stick up for myself for crap.

What do you expect? I’m unsociable.

Having no name pretty much automatically made you the target of random hassling. I didn’t get beat up or have to go through swirlies or whatever, but I guess people felt better if they were gibing somebody nobody knew. If somebody called me a loser, or wanted to be a funny guy and ask me stupid questions out of nowhere (“Hey, best friend! How’s your day going?!” That sarcastic crap), I just shrugged it off. It had gotten to the point where it didn’t bug me anymore.

Singing had become a stress reliever for me. If I had a rough day, hitting the notes of a favorite song eased the pain. Besides that, I sing because it’s the only real way I can express my love for music, and I sounded decent when I did it. I was only twelve and I’d never felt love that seemed real, but I know my love for music is one-hundred-percent true. It’s probably not a good idea to put all your faith in something you’re insecure about, but it got me through my days just fine.

So I was in seventh grade when this whole helter-skelter mess of crap and awesomeness started, right in the latter half of 2007. Where I come from, once you’re done with sixth grade, you’re done with elementary school. Making the huge transition from big to little fish is tough, I heard, but what was the worst that could happen? A few more bad days wouldn’t kill me. They might force me into therapy when I got older, but they wouldn’t kill me.

I did my best to ignore the thought of a brand new school all that summer before seventh grade, way back then. Of course, like all the others, that summer flew by and I just wished I could capture it and keep it in a jar like a firefly. This time it went by faster, since it was the last summer I felt like I could spend as a real kid.

Shooting baskets down at the park at 9 PM, riding my bike in the neighborhood just to feel free was the best. It made me feel like nobody in the world ever existed, and that was like a dream come true for me. Streetlights lit the path of the hot streets, and as I zoomed by them on my bike, invincibility felt true for once. Just for that one moment I felt like nothing could get to me.

The sun was only sometimes out in the summertime, and the lazy afternoon was the best. Everything was either dreary gray or bright orange when the sun was showing, and it gave a vibe that I could never get enough of. If I could write my own songs, I’d definitely write about the feelings I got all through that summer.

It gave me time to think about life and love and deep stuff like that. Time seemed to speed up as I got older. I guess that goes for everyone, though.

I always loved watching the neighborhood life of all the people. There were teens that just hung out, kids that ran wild like a pack of hyenas. That was the life in Claymore, my hometown and true home.

I wouldn’t have changed that for anything. Not even the world.