365: Red; February 25, Rebels and others

I grew up "knowing" (because certain adults in my life told me all the time) I was a rebel. I also grew up confused, because I knew lots of rebels - kids who smoked and drank and cut classes, kids who ran away, kids who set stuff on fire, kids who were gay in the mid 1970s, when that was next to a death sentence.

I was a rebel because I didn't necessarily toe the party line - meaning the narrow definition of right and wrong and politics held by those certain adults, and I was friends with those gay kids. I don't think I really knew what gay meant but I know I didn't care either.

I did so envy those real rebels, the kids who dared to pull the fire alarm and run like hell after. I wanted to be that kind of rebel. Instead, I just wrote essays about Lady MacBeth, who was caught up in events she had no control over but was maligned for it anyway.