I Wish the Real World Would Just Stop Hassling Me

My dad's retired. He likes to sit in his lazy boy and watch discussions on politics because, frankly, he believes every day is taking us one step closer to the second coming.

They said something and my mom started freaking out.

"It's coming." Dad said. I regretted not listening. Those shows are on so often I tend to force them into background sound that rarely reaches me. At least when I'm preoccupied.

"What does that mean?" I asked, referring to the statement I'd missed.

"It means our standard of living is going to go down."

It's the age old cliche, "Life's not fair." I know I should understand this, having heard it on every sitcom I've ever viewed, but I can't help but be indignant. Soon I'll be a high school graduate. Soon I'll be off to college, off to the real world. I can see me entering a career, I can see me trying to start a family. I can see me trying to give my children all they deserve. I can see me trying to give me all I deserve. And it's not fair. Why I can't have the America I had when I was a kid, day-dreaming of growing up to become a veterinarian or a doctor? Why can't I have the America my parents had when they brought me into this world? Why can't I have the America they wrote of in the Constitution? Why has Karma picked my generation for its dumping ground?

A girl I work with once told me how her mom would always let them go visit relatives out of state when they were younger. She said it was because her mother wanted them to know what the real world was like. To quote her exactly, she said it was because "Utah is some protective bubble." She didn't want her children to grow up naive and in the dark.

Perhaps when Brigham Young said this was the place, he didn't mean it for the pioneers with their covered wagons. Perhaps he meant it for me, for you, for anyone who wants that America we grew up proud of. Perhaps this was the place to establish a protective bubble from the real world.

Because perhaps the real world would get rather terrible.

Perhaps the real world is rather terrible.

But what do I know? I'm a gullible resident of the bubble who doesn't even listen to transmissions from the real world.