When I was in the sixth grade, I had the temptation to investigate situations best left alone. On one particular week, my father and I vacationed with my dad to visit my brother in Washington D.C. For some reason, my dad seemed to be glued to his phone which was odd to me, and I wanted to see what was so intriguing that took all of his attention. The second night we were there we checked into the Hilton Hotel. This was the biggest hotel I had ever had the opportunity to stay in. It owned three revolving doors and two automatic doors in between. From the first step you took in the hotel, a gust of freshly washed carpet and roses rammed into your face. The carpet’s print were so elaborate that you could get lost in for days on end. There were people from all over the world just to visit this Hotel. The lobby was so grand that it owned two stories of just check-in desks. The Hotel owned the most vibrant decorated chandeliers as if they were all unique glass kingdoms hanging from the ceiling. You could almost feel this synthetically made wave of the “upper class”. I was so overwhelmed by this whole new place that I found myself clinging to my dad’s arm for protection. As I waited on what must have been the biggest couch I had ever inhabited in my life. I could see him, just staring at his phone, and the only thing I could hear the check-in lady repeatedly state, “I’m sorry Sir, would you like me to restate that again for you Sir?” I started to get worried and think that the contents of the phone were about me and that I had brought another “plague” to the family name. However, he didn’t seem to act any different to me as then any other day I was with him. Quickly minutes started to morph into hours and I started to get impatient, so I ran up to the desk and grabbed his shoulder and made him drop his phone on the floor. In one fluid movement his phone fell from his hands and touched the floor within milliseconds, but it seemed to have been days if you saw his eyes. When it dropped I thought I had to end writing my eulogy, but he just hugged me and said, “Try not to do that again.” After that encounter I knew that the contents of the phone was nothing that would dishonor him, however I still had to know what was in it. When he finally finished checking in we went on to get to our room. We ventured in the elevator to the highest floor of the hotel, which contained an art worthy view. Our room was one of the grandest rooms I ever stayed in. The room had a very distinct smell of chocolate mint, and coconut shampoo. The room owned two beds, a flat screen TV, a giant bathroom, a full body mirror, and two toilets for some reason. We were exhausted from the whole day so we immediately went to sleep.

In the dream I had, I essentially woke up in the same room with everything I had seen hours before hand even to the smell. I arose from my bed and sneaked to his bed and swiftly took his phone from beneath him. I pressed something and the brightest of lights shined in my face and then a loud deep thunderous voice yelled my name which made me jolt sit up out of my bed panting, while he snored. I looked over and the phone was in the same exact place as in my dream. So I got out of bed, and tip-toed, off my bed to his bed. I reached over and laid my hand on the phone. The second I touched I crawled up in a ball as close to the foot of the bed as possible, and the only thing present was the overwhelming roar of silence in the room. Seconds later, I gained the courage to grab the phone and look through it. The contents managed to be thought of for years, but never spoken. I acted like I did not know a thing but inside this constant replay of those consequential minutes. Just as Eve bit the apple and woke up from her innocence, I did as well.

During those years a saga of confusion and fear flushed my soul. Do I bring this up and create a massive conflagration and end in ash, or leave the situation deafly in peace as space? What seemed as a boulder from the start formed into a giant back breaking whole of dark matter. Years later couldn’t handle keeping it bottled up, and it was like a punch to the face. From that moment on, my way of thinking and perceiving situations had changed completely. I never looked at anyone the same and my innocence was killed. However, my maturity was born, I had become a man. I took all the subjects in school that I had hated since day 1, and tied them into my own life. As the different dynasties past the proceeding ones would be a hundred times different, and prosper. I also came to the discovery that I will do whatever it takes to prevent any type of this experience to happen to any of my children of any child for that matter. It is not a good feeling to grow up to soon. It is almost the same as getting punched to the face.