Categories > Celebrities > Fall Out Boy > You Said You'd Keep Me Honest
[Chapter 2] A Rush of Blood to the Head
1 reviewThe obligatory background - and a bit of unpacking.
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In the summer of 1996 I moved from my home in a suburb of Dallas, Texas to Wilmette, Illinois, a suburb of the - much bigger - city of Chicago. In Wilmette, like Garland (where I'd moved from) - school had just been let out for the summer. While that was great news for the kids, it couldn't have been worse for me. Not only was I going to have to make an entirely new group of friends, but I was destined to wait the entire summer to do so.
Because I had stayed with my grandparents while my mom and dad had everything moved up to Wilmette (finishing out freshman year was the one thing I made my own decision on) the house was completely unpacked when I arrived on June 1st. That was, everything but my bedroom.
While it would have been a dream come true to unpack 15 years worth of my life into a foreign room, it had to be done; and it gave me something to do while I had no one nearby to talk to.
I'd love to say unpacking and decorating only took me a few hours, but it was more like a few days. Sunday afternoon, to Tuesday night and every last Beck, Oasis and Sunny Day Real Estate poster was tacked, taped or nailed to the wall.
Unlike my room in Texas, this décor was screaming "Linny!" - the old room, smaller and less private, had spoke in a soft, polite voice "Melinda." It was all my mother's doing.
My mother - a Floridian blond who met and fell in love with my real estate broker of a father; It was dad's company that was the reason behind our move. When he hit his midlife crisis (at 45 - but I won't judge) he decided it was time for a cross-country company expansion. My mom agreed to go along for the ride as long as I was okay with it; publicly...Maybe I was a teensy bit bitter back then, but I couldn't really help it. Uprooting is never 100% good for plants or people.
Nonetheless, here I stood; heroin chic without the drugs (read - "too skinny!", as my grandmother would scold me for) - sitting and planning my future in Wilmette with my dark bangs falling in my face, obscuring my vision and view of what would happen next.
Because I had stayed with my grandparents while my mom and dad had everything moved up to Wilmette (finishing out freshman year was the one thing I made my own decision on) the house was completely unpacked when I arrived on June 1st. That was, everything but my bedroom.
While it would have been a dream come true to unpack 15 years worth of my life into a foreign room, it had to be done; and it gave me something to do while I had no one nearby to talk to.
I'd love to say unpacking and decorating only took me a few hours, but it was more like a few days. Sunday afternoon, to Tuesday night and every last Beck, Oasis and Sunny Day Real Estate poster was tacked, taped or nailed to the wall.
Unlike my room in Texas, this décor was screaming "Linny!" - the old room, smaller and less private, had spoke in a soft, polite voice "Melinda." It was all my mother's doing.
My mother - a Floridian blond who met and fell in love with my real estate broker of a father; It was dad's company that was the reason behind our move. When he hit his midlife crisis (at 45 - but I won't judge) he decided it was time for a cross-country company expansion. My mom agreed to go along for the ride as long as I was okay with it; publicly...Maybe I was a teensy bit bitter back then, but I couldn't really help it. Uprooting is never 100% good for plants or people.
Nonetheless, here I stood; heroin chic without the drugs (read - "too skinny!", as my grandmother would scold me for) - sitting and planning my future in Wilmette with my dark bangs falling in my face, obscuring my vision and view of what would happen next.
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