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I am Brenden Blaney. I am just six foot tall, and freshly 18 years old. I have brown hair and brown eyes. I’m right handed with just about everything, and I have a substantial difference between my dominant side and my non-dominant though I have a rather stocky base build.

I have few interests, but I am pretty involved into what interests I do have. I love Metal music preferably from the subgenres Metalcore and Deathcore. I enjoy cleaning because it keeps order. I also have a passion for learning as well. I’m a bit simple, and very boring.

My favorite things? Well, my most favorite thing ever is listening to music. My favorite food is hands down meatloaf. Meatloaf is a godsend. My favorite games would be anything fast paced. Something that I love: anime. It may be strange, but I am a huge nerd whenever it comes to anime, games, and anything you can get me interested in.

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Before me, there was my mother, Jessie, and my father, James, along with their ancestors. Ancestry-wise I favor my father’s bloodline. His mother’s father, Glenn Chernick, ran with Chicago gangs, but nothing like the gangs you hear about now. He was with the real gangs, like what Mr. Capone had. Once, he got shot once in the neck and three times in the body while robbing a warehouse. The guard only had a revolver and whenever his gun was empty, Glenn went and nearly beat him to death while he was wounded. He was taken to a hospital for his injuries. He was also the only survivor of The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery. He was incarcerated for 25 years in a St. Louis prison. After all of his time in there, he got a lot more cozy with St. Louis gangs while Chicago changed quite a bit. So, after he got out he made his new home there.

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I think that some interesting family stories are always a good way to pass the time. Maybe a good one is that time whenever I had once gone out and caught a lot of snakes around the neighborhood and went back home. I told my mom and my sister to come outside, because I had something to show them. Upon their arrival, they immediately took note of a Planter’s peanut can in my hand. I simply showed a maniacal smile and opened the can. Thus, giving the snakes freedom and hope resulting in them exploding out of the can and slithering everywhere.

Another fun little story; I was about 2 or 3 and there was a ridiculous snowstorm that had come through Salem. At the time, we lived behind my grandmother in her house. When my mom had woken up, she instantly knew something was wrong with me. She sprung up and realized that there was a bit of a chilly breeze in the house. Strange. She gets up to find the front door wide open and tracks from our door up to ol’ Gee-maw’s house. Turns out I did that adventure in a simple dress of diaper and some Clifford, The Big Red Dog slippers. Good times.

The day I’d met the woman that I call my grandmother, Paula, was definitely a funny one. Paula comes home after another day in her office at S&T, unlocks her apartment door, steps inside, closes the door, and locks it back. She turns around to be greeted by a chunky, little five year-old. Said chunky, little five year-old hops up from the couch, walks to her, stretches out his hand and says, “Hi, I’m Brenden Gregory Blaney.” She looked at him and said, “Well, my name’s Paula.” To which his response was simply, “I know.” Bewildered, she watches as he sits back down on the couch. “There’s TV right there, if you would like to watch it. The channel for cartoons is-” She begins to say before he interrupts, “I know, I’ve been here before.”

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On January 5, 2000 I was born in St. Louis. My name, Brenden, was simply decided on by my father because he just for some reason wanted a son named Brenden, and Gregory, my middle name, came from my mom arguing that if my older brother got my dad’s first name then his second son will have his second name. That’s how I came into this world as the one, the only, Brenden Blaney.

I don’t really remember much about my first decade starting my life, but, I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to forget about my younger sister, Bobbi. She was born April 26, 2007. She was my baby which was kind of a surprise to some people apparently. I say that because my grandmother warned my mother, telling her that she was afraid that I might kill her. As if that would ever happen; she’s still my baby.

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I came from Rolla, Missouri at first. I lived there for a pretty long time. Since before kindergarten up to about the end of first grade, and that’s whenever I went to my hometown, Salem. Or at least in the rural area of it. I went to a rural school, and lived in a trailer park essentially in the middle of nowhere. I don’t remember much about the trailer, but I do remember seeing a ghost there somewhere around third grade. I would see it every few days just walking. It would walk until it turned a corner and then it would disappear. It was a male with a large overcoat and he had a powdered wig. It was pretty wild.

In the summer of getting ready for fourth grade, we moved in town. I lived in another trailer park right next to a McDonald’s and a Dollar General. It was a pretty plain place. I never really hung anything up on the walls or anything. I had a buddy of mine that lived with me at the time. His name was Dylan, and he added more character than I ever did in his time there. I lived there until sophomore year, which is whenever I moved here to Ozark.

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I wish that I could see Dustin again. Dustin was a buddy of mine that I’d known for a very long time. I’d met him whenever I first moved to Salem in the rural area and fate brought us together off and on from then until about two years ago. He moved to St. Louis with his family and everything changed for him.

He seems to act like he’s in a gang, and he uses drugs for recreational purposes. He’s changed a lot since whenever I first met him. I’m thinking about finding some way for he and I to hang out for a week or so sometime. Maybe he could learn a few things, and we could catch up.

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High school has been a blast. My time as a freshman was really bad to say the least. I failed everything but History class. This was also the year whenever one of my only three friends came to live me. Poor little Dylan. He went to live with his mom in Minnesota and after a few months she just dropped him off at his dad’s house with all of his stuff. She never told him, or anything. He ended up staying with us. I never did any schoolwork, or even left the house. I just wasted away.

Sophomore year was a bit better. I had the sudden urge to excel in school. I did everything in my power to make sure that I had perfect attendance, and I did my work in my classes. I had actually woken up late one day and I started running to school with my bag on. Once it was 7:45 and the school was still two and a half miles away, I ditched my bag underneath a tree at a church, and ran the rest of the way there. The bell rang as soon as I sat down in my seat for first period. I had a big fear of everyone at the time. I tried to stay quiet so that no one would pay much attention to me, and I avoided too much contact with anyone. At the end of the year I enrolled into Ozark, and it changed me entirely.

Then I was a junior, and things aren’t too terribly different. Still getting used to everything being done on computers instead of paper, and stuff. I still tried in my classes, but I can’t say that I didn’t have any trouble at all. I had a lot of rough spots. I remember my drama class being a lot of fun. All of the improv we’d done always ended up being pretty funny. Especially when Kyle Widmar was involved. He was so funny, and he did everything perfectly.

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At last, I’m a senior. As it stands, I haven’t gotten any senior pictures, I haven’t gone to any dances, nor have I gone to any games. I’ve just been some kid wanting to stay just that for a bit longer. I’m not looking forward to leaving at all. I know that this graduation business is supposed to be really bringing about feelings of accomplishment, but I don’t feel like that at all. I’m hardly passing on time, and I wish I would’ve been able to actually do something worthwhile.

Despite the fact that I don’t feel like I belong in this position, I can say that I have thoroughly enjoyed it. My favorite thing about it is whenever I meet an underclassmen and they ask what grade I’m in. I never really realized the whole glorification of seniors thing was real until I became a senior, because they just sit back, wide-eyed, gasping, realizing that one of their “superiors” has been just hanging out with them as another person and not as a Freshman, Sophomore, or Junior.

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If I Could Live My Life All Over Again, I Would...

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If I Could Live My Life All Over Again, I Would...

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If I could do everything all over again, then I would be one indecisive kid. I would be torn apart by the chance of being able to go back to fourth grade and stop playing games so that I would actually do my schoolwork instead of fail all of my classes. I would exercise and make sure that I ate right, so my body developed correctly. I would make sure that I took better care of my little sister and my mom when she was too depressed to leave her room for years. I would fight all of Mother’s boyfriends whenever they would get hostile. I would change so much.

Despite that, I don’t think I would want that now. I am who I am because of what I’ve been through, and I like who I am. Maybe I would like to actually feel like I earned this graduation, or that I didn’t waste my childhood in an escape from reality. But, I like where I am now. I am graduating and I’m sure I’m going to be a bit of a child for the rest of my life in some aspects, so it all works out. I’ll just have to keep myself moving forward; one foot in front of the other.

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I can’t say that I have a solid plan post-graduation, but I can see myself living decently. I know that I’ll be employed and working whenever able. I’ll more than likely be in an apartment, and have a roommate to split the costs accordingly. I’ll have been to college, be in college, or be in a Metal band as a screaming vocalist. I’ll still be in Ozark, probably those apartments by South Elementary. More than likely I’ll be single. That’s one way it could go at least.

Plan B is achieved by having a fully functional relationship with someone. That’s the only catalyst that’ll take me away from living in my apartment. In this instance, I would have my own home, a wife, and a child if not two. I’d be working constantly, and I’d come home to clean, and spend some time with the family. That’s about all I can really see for myself in ten years.