Excerpt: The Silent Music of Wicked Words

For all the hours spent in a certain place, it almost becomes absurd that you will not, at one point, be contained in that arena. Take, for instance, the educational system. Dante was whipped into nursery school the moment he was out of Pampers. His mother fed him fish oils, only let him eat organic, no television except for PBS, and even then, only in moderation. From nursery school to preschool, from preschool to elementary, middle school and junior high, high school, college, university, and finally, graduate school. In all that time, maturity is very rarely reached. Dante didn't know what a Fruit Roll-up was until the seventh grade, and that was only because his preparatory school let in several "low income" sympathy students, so they would look good, demographically speaking. They were the ones that had secondhand uniforms - the hems were sometime worn, lightened by too many washes. "Seems unfair," some would say, "that they're forced into a world that doesn't really want them." And so, their journey was that much more difficult, the brie and roast beef tasted all the richer before turning to ash in their mouths, and their tears more pronounced on hungry faces.
He resented the fact that he was well-off. That his parents were well off. That his friends were well-off. That his pet schnauzer ate better, was more pampered than, many lower-class people living five miles away in the stash-away ghetto codenamed, "Low-Income Housing Project: Tropical Fern Garden Place."