This would not be remarkable in and of itself except that it is the very first time ever that this has happened.
I'm proud of him really!
Yay for having the wherewithal to entertain yourself when those around you have failed to entertain you.
Yay for not just sitting in front of the tv mindlessly which is what the rest of the family is doing.
Yay for being yourself.
Yay for escaping something that is bugging you and using music as your escape hatch.
But, this being Christmas time, I am reminded of holidays past and on how many occasions I escaped to the sanctity of my room.
Ah.
My room.
When I was a kid we had a house on the street where my cousins also lived. Which was good because our house was always full of family - but bad because our house was always full of someone.
I had a cool bedroom. TWO closets! But TINY. I wanted more space. So, I asked my younger brother with the bigger room that had NO closet to switch with me. Amazingly (and to this day I don't know why) he agreed. So, we switched rooms.
It was an older house and my new room had floral wallpaper - ugh - so I asked my parents to paint it before I moved in - which they did. Eventually.
This was in the summer before I started grade 10.
But it took them from the summer through to February to do it! Granted, there was about a dozen layers of ugly wallpaper and the walls were in rough shape - but I was homeless for months...or was I?
As a teenager I had the ultimate escape room. I had the family trailer - parked in the drive way of our house - that was my room for almost 6 months!
It was so cool - almost like having my own apartment. But without food or running water or a toilet.
In the winter I had a space heater on a timer and my dad would only allow me in my "room" when the heater was on (after 9) and it was cold as hell. But it was cool.
Now, if I'd had cool friends with booze and pot who wanted to come over and sneak in and have sex, I would have some kick ass stories to tell you wouldn't I? But I didn't.
I never had one - no not one - friend over to my bachelorette pad.
I never snuck anything illicit in or out of the trailer.
It didn't have a phone.
Or cable.
I had my 12" black and white tv with a metal coat hanger as an antennae and my turntable. They sat on the fold down kitchen table at the front.
I used to play Duran Duran's Rio over and over and over those six months. Sure, I know all the words to all of the songs now, but for the life of me, I can't think of why I liked it. I prefer to think at this point that it was peer pressure!
I liked Rio because a boy gave it to me. And I liked the boy. Boys give me a lot of my music in my life.
The only one that I truly compromised my principles for was the boy that was totally into Springsteen. God love him (and I was all kinds of fucked up over him) he was not very attractive, not particularly nice, not terribly bright, drove an awful car and had hideous taste in music. I don't even think he liked ME which is usually enough to sway me. But, I'm getting off track here...
So, there I am, in my 6 month trailer secondment. Sleeping cold. And I loved it. Because, like Ben, I could hide away. I could turn on music and escape into my head. I could read and be a million miles away. I didn't hate my life like a normal teenager - but, I needed to know that there were other lives out there for me. In my room is where I figured that out.
Sometimes you just need to be quiet to hear what you're telling yourself.
Good for him for figuring that out.
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