One: Big Dreams. Small Plans.
This is the story of a boy. A boy with a name that rhymed with just about everything. A name he would at first love, but soon hate. A name, that for the last twenty years, has held it’s own in the top 5 of most popular names for American children. A name in which the boy often wonders if the nurse had already begun writing on the birth certificate as she asked the mother and father for it. So, to tell you his name might hinder this rather unique boy. Making his story a little bland and not very fun for you to read. Therefore, for the sake of this story and the boy’s own comfort, we will say his name is Jeremiah Rapheal Alexander III but refer to him as Matthew. A fitting, boring, common name for you to identify with and to help this peculiar story of a boy with an unpeculiar name flow just a bit more.
The question of where to begin is always a silly question, because the best place to begin would be at the beginning. However, Matthew’s story will begin at his first memory. The age of 5. Now, this isn’t to say that he doesn’t know of the things that happened before this age, but somewhere along the way they fell out of his head and were put back out of order and in pieces by those who remember the first half of his first decade.
Now, back to his first memory. To set the scene a little bit. Matthew lived in your average middle class two story home in your average middle class neighborhood with his average middle class parents in the town of Grayfield. And in this house was Matthew’s room, the first room at the top of the stairs, and this room was a mess.
Just minutes before, Matthew had decided to rearrange his room. Now to a boy at the age of 5 his room was his life. Everything that was his was in his room, so to say he was rearranging his room would be an understatement and not very good forshadowing. Because what Matthew was doing was far more important. He was rearranging his life as he knew it.
At first this was exciting. The feeling of being in complete control. What he didn’t see, and where we pick up the story now, is the mess that he has made and the complete loss of control he now feels. Matthew decided he wanted his book shelf on the other side of the room, so the best way to move it would be to rip all the books off the shelf and throw them onto the ground. However, where he wanted his bookshelf was blocked by his can of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures. So, as he sat in his pile of books looking over at the 3 foot tall, green cylinder, TMNT logo’d can he decided that his next step would be to unload it and move it to the other side of the room.
Here’s the problem with Matthew. He dreams big. He plans small. Now 20 minutes have passed and his big change has become an empty can on one side of the room, an empty bookshelf on the other side, and an enormous cluster of books and ninja turtles spread across the floor blocking any attempt to move these two objects…anywhere.
The reason we start off with this memory is because this moment will become a reocurring theme in his life. His big dreams, but small plans will lead him into messes that he never saw coming and will struggle to figure out how to clean them up, or in some cases, struggle with never being able to do so.
Matthew does not know how or if the mess he made in his room that day was ever cleaned up by him or one of his most likely irritated parents. He assumes it had to of been, and wishes he could remember how he or others did it. But, at least for now, it will remain a lesson lost.
