the miseducation of patrick dunn

Last year, I reminisced about the Dunn family Christmas in 1995. Well, now it’s 1996, and the saga continues. My voice grew a little deeper and the teenage angst was at its apex:

I shuffled down the stairs, pissed off that I had to wake up this early for unwrapping gifts - Christmas is fucking gay. I walked across the sea of gifts that littered my living room floor and collapsed onto the couch. I felt like I was in a Family Circus holiday special. Everyone had these shitty smiles on their face and I just wanted to go lock myself in my bedroom for the duration of the school break.  

“Here’s something for you, Pattywhack,” said my baby sister as she handed me a gift wrapped in Mickey Mouse-themed paper.

It was shaped like a poster, certainly felt like a poster. I slowly unwrapped it with a snarl expression on my face. Thirty seconds later, I discovered it was a poster of Shirley Manson, the lead singer of Garbage and somewhat responsible for my teenage gloominess.

“Thanks for the present,” I mumbled, but somewhere deep in my slumbering heart was ecstatic, “I’m going back up to my room to hang this on my wall, and will probably stay there for the rest of the day.”

That is exactly what I did.