Her name is Mary. Mary is a girl that I went to school with from kindergarten through twelvth grade. We both lived in a very small town and attended the same school from K-12. Mary was a stem of a wealthy family, possibly one of the wealthiest families in my home town. Being a product of a wealthy family almost seemed to go straight to Mary's head. Not long after entering Middle School, Mary stuck out as the ring leader of my group of friends. She wore nothing but brand name clothing and made fun of us that didn't wear everything name brand on a daily basis. Becoming almost the leader of our group, Mary was quick to let us know when we were not doing something to her standards. It was almost as if we all had to bow down to her and obey her. I distinctly remember not wanting her to be mad at me. Therefore, I went out of my way to make her happy everyday so that she would still be my friend.
Why did we all bow down to Mary and listen to her like she was our dictator? I still to this day have no idea why we allowed her to run our lives while we were in school together. As high school passed by the problems with Mary only deepened. Then, more than ever, we all wanted to make Mary happy and let her lead us. If any of the girls that I was friends with at the time did something after school and we didn't invite Mary we would almost fear the next day of school. We knew that not including Mary, even though she probably wouldn't of wanted to join us would only make for a day from hell the following day.
Then my senior year finally rolled around. During this year of school I did a lot of growing up and knew I wouldn't probably be friends with a lot of the people that i was at the time. With this notion, I started to pull away from Mary and become my own person. I was tired of living in her shadow and bowing down to her day in and day out. I decided it was time to live my own life and live it my own way without Marys approval. This decision did not go well with Mary. The entire school year was filled with fighting because Mary didn't like that i was finally breaking away from her rule and becoming my own person. Now that I am going to be a Junior in college, Mary and I have finally started to patch up our differences and become civil with each other again and I'm grateful to finally be patching things up.
Today, Mary is attending Grand Rapids Community College and lives in a luxurious apartment with her boyfriend and puppy. She relaxes on her thousand dollar sofa and drinks only the best bottled water. She orders out for dinner and never really puts her stainless steel kitchen appliances to use. Her fairly new puppy sprawls out on her California King, down feather bedding and spacious floor rugs. She drives a new jeep that must get nothing more than twelve miles to a gallon and wears only the top of the line designer clothing. Her new Coach hand bag sits on her stone coffee table next to her I-phone near the remotes to her top of the line home theater center. Her parents still foot out thousands of dollars a year to support her need to have the best of best.
In the next ten years I see Mary marring her now boyfriend and moving with him to his home town of Chicago. Her parents will continue to fork out thousands of dollars to her on yearly basis and continue to make her payments on her oh so needed new vehicles. She will be a part owner in her parents business and will be rolling in the money herself. She will live comfortable and be able to own everything that she has ever wanted and never received (which can't be much). She will live in a luxurious and large house with a garage filled with top of the line new vehicles. Her closet will continue to grow in size. Overall, I don't think her taste for rich things will ever change. I don't for see Mary every changing.
In reflection, this exercise was harder than expected when it came to listing the props of this persons life. It was harder than i thought it would be to think of all the things she has in her huge apartment. It was even harder to think of the things she may have because i haven't been around in her almost two years. But, i think this was a very beneficial exercise that really exercised my brain to really things of the things in a characters surrounds.
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ReplyDeleteHit the "post" button to soon on that last one....
ReplyDeleteSome terrific details here! The focus shifts a bit from Mary to you -- not necessarily a bad thing, since many stories that are told by one character about another explore exactly these kinds of difficult relationships. The description of Mary's current apartment is especially vivid!
One thing we always have to watch out for when translating real characters into fiction is to keep our eyes open for things that might make a character dynamic. Most characters change -- if only in a small way -- over the course of a story. In what small (or even big) ways might some someone as set in her ways as this character change?