CHAPTER 3 – A NEW YEAR (continued)
These things might have
kept me on the margins of a few conversations, but these disparities were
nothing compared to the difference in transportation. Kids at our church had used BMWs and
Mercedes, brand-new Mazdas and Toyotas, or full custom pickups and SUVs. I drove (when I could get it) my dad’s brown
1983 Oldsmobile. Most of the time, I went
around like a beggar, asking people for rides.
I didn’t have to beg for rides from my youth group much,
because I was usually with my parents, but it was an everyday struggle at
school. Basketball was the last period
of the day, and we never got out in time to catch the bus, so I was stuck
without a way to get home. No one wanted
to commit to driving me home on a daily basis, so every afternoon contained the
humiliating quest to find a willing friend to take me home.
* *
* * *
“It sucks, Dad,” I said, as we talked about it on the way
home from a grocery store run on the last day of summer. “I know there’s nothing we can do about it,
but I feel like an idiot every day.”
