Wide Awake by David Levithan

Author:David Levithan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780375891465
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2008-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

fifteen

My parents and I never went on big vacations when I was younger. Mostly we stayed within a few hours of our house. Money was an issue—it always was an issue during the Greater Depression. Even though we had a conversion car, it still cost a lot to fuel it up. And then there was the matter of time, which was an even bigger issue during the Greater Depression for my family. Both of my parents had jobs, and those jobs required them to work more and more hours as the economy worsened. Even when my mom was home with me, she was also at her workstation, trying to get her assignments done. I remember times when she would read her memos aloud to me in her best storybook voice, trying to trick me into believing that international travel restrictions were as transfixing as the location of wild things. Vacation days became voluntary for both of my parents, meaning that both of them were paid more if they left the office less. In a time when there were so many people out of work, replaced by computers and outsourcing, it wasn’t like my parents were going to put up a fight. I was the only one who resisted, seeing places on my screen and demanding to be taken to them. I wanted to go to Australia. I wanted to see the Grand Canyon. My parents downloaded simulations for me, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted to touch a koala. I wanted the Grand Canyon to hear my voice.

The older I got, the more I realized how lucky we were. Some members of Congress had wanted to start a Second New Deal to get unemployed people back to work, restoring some of our national parkland and renovating schools and libraries. But instead the President started his War to End All Wars, and a lot of the unemployed men and women got shipped away to “defend democracy” and “defeat evil.” It was as if the President had decided that superpowers needed to follow the same plotlines as superheroes, that in order to be good you had to be actively, constantly fighting evil. So he sent our troops to Africa, which had been so debilitated by AIDS and other diseases as we watched, and to the Middle East, trying yet again to create the area in our own image. He left Europe alone because they were enough like us. And he left China alone because China would have bombed us to oblivion if we’d tried anything. The plan was poorly drawn, and as a result the WTEAW was drawn out and drawn out and drawn out, until enough people had died and the economy had recovered enough for the President to declare a victory only he believed.

So at least my family was safe. And if that was the price to pay for not traveling, I was willing (in retrospect) to pay it.

Still, as we drove on through Ohio and Indiana and Illinois, I started to get a sense of everything I’d been missing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.