Up in a puff of smoke.

When I left off, my father had little to do with me, and my stepfather wanted nothing but to be there for me. I found myself lucky to have a man like my stepfather, he was ex Navy and had seen the world. He had been to Italy and Columbia, among many others. He had seen combat in Desert Storm, and learned technical skills through military training programs, so he found work in desirable fields, which kept a bit of stability in our living situations. We did move from upstate New York to Long Island.

I'd find Long Island was a good place to be for some reasons, and bad for other. The first apartment we moved to was one of those bad places to be. The town itself was okay, and at first the apartment was adequate. We lived on the second floor of a two family two story house. We were mindful of our noise knowing we had neighbors downstairs, and me being an avid gamer, rough-housing was never really anything that interested me, so I could just sit quietly and play on my games without disturbing anyone.

As it were, I found out there was a young boy around my age living downstairs from us. One day we decided to hang out in his place, and I got to see a side of people I had yet to see in my few years on earth. As I walked into their apartment, I was greeted by a cloud of smoke so thick, it looked like a brush fire. Everything inside was grayed, and the smell was awful. The boy lived with his mother and grandmother who smoked like chimney's, the grandmother taking puffs of her cigarette as she pulled off her oxygen mask, dragging the tank around behind her.

I also found out the boy was an extreme asthmatic, and while living in this puff of smoke, he'd constantly be on a nebulizer, a machine that helps him to breath. I saw a complete disregard for this boy's health as they continued smoking right next to him as he gasped for air into this machine. It breaks my heart to this day, thinking about how little some people can care about their children.

The school I went to had it's ups and downs as well. The teachers were good at teaching, I learned a lot that stuck with me through later years, but their grasp on the kids were non existent, Kids were fighting in the halls, jumping around on top of each other, being more out of control than I had ever seen, and this was only elementary school. It was just a situation where I kept quiet and flew under the radar. I was picked on a bit but for the most part I kept to myself and was happy that way.

We tried to finish out the school year, but we weren't going to stay. We eventually moved again, something I had been very used to.