So without further ado, here is a glimpse of my life, which will be hitting the shelves of your local bookstores very soon.
Alex Norton: Life on the Streets...of Local Neighborhoods
When I was born, my parents already had six kids. By this point in their lives, having a new kid was the last thing they were worried about. They had gotten so used to having kids around that they pretty much left me to raise myself. In elementary school, I woke myself up every morning, made my breakfast and eventually woke up my slacker parents because there was one thing I still couldn’t do on my own: drive myself to school. Lord knows I tried to drive myself, but there was always something in my way and it was usually the dashboard. Driving me to school was an unnecessary problem. See, my dad fancied himself a used car dealer and stocked our front yard with cars from the 1970s…it was 1997. We had an abundance of cars in which he could have driven me to school, each equally as shitty as the next. Every day I begged him to drop me off a few blocks away from school so I could avoid the embarrassment of being seen in a 1978 El Camino with three hubcaps, but he insisted on driving me straight to the front door of the school: no kid of his was going to be seen walking to school. Great. The one thing he cared about. I made it through elementary school with little significant events aside from the normal teasing, pushing and hair burning of grammar-schoolers.
After elementary school, I moved to middle school. I was no dummy so there was no problem getting from the fifth to the sixth grade and on through eighth, but I honestly don’t remember a thing about middle school aside from the murder attempts by the PE teachers that they disguised as running drills. And Myspace – lots of Myspace, but I’d rather not talk about that dark moment in history.
High school was my place. I breezed through classes with absolutely no studying and probably no knowledge of the subjects. It was when facebook was introduced to the high school generation that my life completely changed. Finally, I knew exactly what people were doing at all times of the day, whether they were my friends, acquaintances or people I thought I recognized, but really didn’t, then kept as friends because I didn’t want my friend count to dwindle below 500. The first few years of facebook, I joined the crowd and updated my status to tell the world (aka my 557 close friends) what I was doing. Then I realized that the sun gods had given me a gift that was going unnoticed. Now I’m no Lucille Ball, but I can make a person laugh, especially if that person is myself. I even cracked myself up thinking about this autobiography when I considered using the lyrics to “Fancy” or “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” by Reba McEntire and Reba McEntire, respectively, as my life stories. I ultimately decided against both of those because I’m obviously not an 18 year old prostitute in a red dancin’ dress and I’m not ready to confess to murder just yet.
Now that I’m in college, I only find myself funnier. I find more and more often that I’m the only one who thinks I’m funny, but that’s quite alright with me. Okay, it’s not alright with me. No one wants to be friends with me and I think that’s just plain ridiculous. Freshman year is almost over and I’m going out with a number of friends barely above the number I started with and a level of wit way higher than I’ve ever achieved. Friends or no friends, my future is bright.
When I was born, my parents already had six kids. By this point in their lives, having a new kid was the last thing they were worried about. They had gotten so used to having kids around that they pretty much left me to raise myself. In elementary school, I woke myself up every morning, made my breakfast and eventually woke up my slacker parents because there was one thing I still couldn’t do on my own: drive myself to school. Lord knows I tried to drive myself, but there was always something in my way and it was usually the dashboard. Driving me to school was an unnecessary problem. See, my dad fancied himself a used car dealer and stocked our front yard with cars from the 1970s…it was 1997. We had an abundance of cars in which he could have driven me to school, each equally as shitty as the next. Every day I begged him to drop me off a few blocks away from school so I could avoid the embarrassment of being seen in a 1978 El Camino with three hubcaps, but he insisted on driving me straight to the front door of the school: no kid of his was going to be seen walking to school. Great. The one thing he cared about. I made it through elementary school with little significant events aside from the normal teasing, pushing and hair burning of grammar-schoolers.
After elementary school, I moved to middle school. I was no dummy so there was no problem getting from the fifth to the sixth grade and on through eighth, but I honestly don’t remember a thing about middle school aside from the murder attempts by the PE teachers that they disguised as running drills. And Myspace – lots of Myspace, but I’d rather not talk about that dark moment in history.
High school was my place. I breezed through classes with absolutely no studying and probably no knowledge of the subjects. It was when facebook was introduced to the high school generation that my life completely changed. Finally, I knew exactly what people were doing at all times of the day, whether they were my friends, acquaintances or people I thought I recognized, but really didn’t, then kept as friends because I didn’t want my friend count to dwindle below 500. The first few years of facebook, I joined the crowd and updated my status to tell the world (aka my 557 close friends) what I was doing. Then I realized that the sun gods had given me a gift that was going unnoticed. Now I’m no Lucille Ball, but I can make a person laugh, especially if that person is myself. I even cracked myself up thinking about this autobiography when I considered using the lyrics to “Fancy” or “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” by Reba McEntire and Reba McEntire, respectively, as my life stories. I ultimately decided against both of those because I’m obviously not an 18 year old prostitute in a red dancin’ dress and I’m not ready to confess to murder just yet.
Now that I’m in college, I only find myself funnier. I find more and more often that I’m the only one who thinks I’m funny, but that’s quite alright with me. Okay, it’s not alright with me. No one wants to be friends with me and I think that’s just plain ridiculous. Freshman year is almost over and I’m going out with a number of friends barely above the number I started with and a level of wit way higher than I’ve ever achieved. Friends or no friends, my future is bright.
