To illustrate my life as a fable, I have chosen to outline two small experiences that I've had. That's it: just two.
The first is a story of my hometown: Mason, Ohio. Being recently named the seventh best place to live, Mason is pretty close to a small garden paradise -- but I didn't always think of it like that. As a young kid I somehow convinced myself that I had to move to California. I thought that everything there would be better: the weather, the education, the technology. But when I visited San Francisco on vacation for the first time in my life, I saw a slightly different story. I took an apple from the tree of knowledge, and learned of the poverty, hippies, and other things strange to me that existed in the real world. Unlike Adam and Eve, though, I was able to return to my hometown, and realize that the grass really isn't greener on the other side.
Another story, which just happened a few weeks ago deals with a very complicated issue: racial relations. For most of my young life I had always assumed the best in people. I had always assumed that everyone was kindhearted enough to want to give and receive gifts from a knothole in a tree. Until one day at the shoestore in which I work, an elderly woman made extremely degrading comments to my African American coworker. As if an innocent man had been convicted right before my eyes, I instantly lost my innocence. Though most of our population is filled with Atticuses, racism is not dead.
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