Romanticize Your Life

When I was a kid, growing up, I used to get beat up a lot. At least it feels like I did. I can't be too sure, really, since my memory is always playing tricks on me. I tend to romanticize my life as much as possible so memories sometimes become inflated or deflated. My wife thinks its pretty unimaginable that I used to get beat up so much. Every now and then we talk about it and she asks why anyone would want to fight me. I wasn't a jerky kid really, I don't think. I am trying to teach my wife how to romanticize her life more. She is a realist, you know, real politic. She is also kind of a worrier, but she gets her shit done. She always, always gets her shit done. I end up romanticizing getting shit done and then it never really gets done. But she doesn't do that, she just makes a list and checks things off. She has a black book she carries around. But I would get beat up all the time. Sometimes kids would just come up to me and hit me. I got suspended one time because some kid I didn't even know came up and started hitting me and I hit him back for a while then he just stopped and walked off. I still remember his jeans jacket from the back. I think he got expelled which must've been what he wanted. That's pretty funny right there. I was probably just some kid he thought he could beat up to get expelled because he didn't want to be in junior high anymore. Maybe I shouldn't say I got beat up as much as kids picked fights with me. The popular jocks figured I was an easy target. The wannabe gangsters thought I was an easy target. The misfit rocker kids thought I was an easy target. I actually wasn't that easy, as it turns out, I just didn't know I wasn't that easy. I didn't figure that out until much, much later.