In today's society the youth (me) are inundated with the "fashions" of the world. Some of these are completely harmless to get into, and rarely make a huge impact on your life. The other kinds aren't as good to get into. There really is a push to be bad. There isn't a real form of motivation not to be good in any way. To be honest it's quite the opposite. I'm guilty of falling into those "fashions".
Pop-culture tells us that it's cool to go down to your nearest club and get completely wasted. Sounds like a good Idea right? But in the Immortal words of G.K. Chesterton "Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions". A lie is a lie in short. The world will just end up screwing you over if you get caught up in what pop-culture tells you to do. I had to find out all of this the hard way.


When I was about 13 I started getting into the cheep boxed wine that my step mother keeps an ample supply of. A bit to you young, don't you think? I wouldn't really say I was an addict, but I definitely had a problem. It got so bad that I would forget to do my school work. That was easy to achieve because I was in fact home schooled. It sounds weird, "A Thirteen year old home schooled wino", but that's the product of a messed up media, telling you that you should be messed up to, so the whole world is messed up. A big part of this I would have to say was my step dad at that time. He wasn't the model citizen at all. He was an avid drinker, a biker, a pot head, and cussed like a sailor. Unfortunately I really looked up to that man. Of cores I didn't like the constant fighting between him and my mother. In fact he was much more pleasant when he was high than sober. The house we lived in was always a mess, not that my mom didn't try. She just couldn't keep up with His inability to refuse worthless junk. Every corner had some gadget that a telemarketer had managed to sell him. It got so bad that the space behind the diner table was packed with the most random objects you could image. A copy of the US constitution, a pair of snow shoes, a Beebe gun, est. . There was no end to the influx of garbage.
It caused so many fights between them. She would try to clean the house, and he would go into a rage of obsessive compulsiveness, and he played dirty too. He would try to turn the situation around, and try to hide his own wrongs with the wrongs he would fabricate, and stick onto my mom. He was more like a Fifteen year old, than a Fifty year old, and that made it easy to relate to him at some times. He and I would talk guns, Nazi history, movies, and bikes. That made it less difficult for me to forget how he treated my mom at times.
That all ended the night he came back for the annual Colorado beer festival.



At first it was like any night he got home. Every one walked by him like he was a coiled cobra, just waiting to see what kind of mood he was in that day, and praying to God that it was a good one. Unfortunately he was unstably drunk, and completely unpredictable. To bad for us, but we took that as him being in a good mood. He got his dinner and sat down in the living room with us, and started asking us how our day was when we abruptly heard the door bell go off. He got up and answered it, and invited his friend Steve in. He and Steve, began to talk about putting tile flouring in our kitchen, witch was an absurd idea, seaming as the house we lived in was a mobile home. I guess he though it was a good idea, because he was very into the idea of it, so into the idea in fact that he went back to the computer room to retrieve one of his many gadgets so he could remove the vent in the kitchen. Upon finding that what he was looking for was missing, he flew into the most full blown rages I have ever seen. He started yelling, and throwing stuff, as his friend decided it would be a good idea to duck out. He grabbed a coaster and threw it at the coffee table, subsequently hitting a cup filled with crystal light. My mom got up to go get a rag to clean up the mess, and he followed her, as if to help her. Instead he cornered her, and began to call her names. It quickly escalated when he started to clench his fists and wind up to hit her. For me, that was the last straw.


I had spent the better part of ten years walking on egg shells. Afraid to be at my mom’s house, because it meant that I had to be in an other one of those stressful situations. So I did what any good son would do. I got up and used the black belt that I had just been awarded a month earlier. I got up and I beet the snot out of him. I
made him think twice about touching my mom, and about touching anyone, because I was tired. Tired of the hell he made for us, and the constant fighting. When he was adequately beaten, my mom called the police, and they arrested him for aggravated assault, and “Child abuse”. I guess getting the tar beaten out of you is considered “Child abuse”. But anyway, my mom bought a house, and hasn't seen him for almost three years.


In those three years I haven't touched alcohol. I refuse to. I refuse to become what he is, and to do that to my family. I refuse not to be a real man, and stand for what I know is right. I know that the world around me will tempt me, but I can overcome the world. I can be my own world, without the trash, and without it having to tell me what to be, and what to do. I am my own person, and only I can tell my self how to be, and how to react to my surroundings.