My days as a carny man

When I graduated high school my parents (my dad and my stepmother) bought me a train ticket and a suitcase for a graduation present. They more or less threw me out, I was confused and very much in horror. Did they love me? I was on my way to live with my mother, whom I hadn't seen more than three times in the thirteen years they'd been divorced. I lived there for a year and was spoiled for about four months of it. My mother and her husband were getting furious with me because I misused everything they gave me. I was never given anything as a child and they made everything so hard to earn it wasn't worth it. So, I gave up. My mother told me I had to figure out what to do, after a year of living with her. I had no real life experience and so, I joined the carnival. I was terrified, I felt like it was the only choice I had. The hours were very long and the heat was vicious. I hated it. You worked from dawn to midnight. When I was finished at night I would have to stop and rest two or three times before I made it home. This carnival was the last one in the world that traveled by train. The rooms weren't much bigger than closets and the things was roach infested. You slept on what seemed like old prison matresses. At night the roaches would crawl all over you. The living conditions were ripe for misery. The train was often very dreary. I worked for the company for six months as a ride worker and was very exhausted when I quit. The average work week at the fairs was a hundred hours. They paid you a salary of two hundred dollars a week. I will never work for the carnival again. I did love the train rides. it was the only thing I loved about working for them. Most of the people there were hardened ex- criminals or misfits thrown away by there families. I learned to love every single one of them, despite one of them giving me a black eye. As much as I hated the carny life, I never regret the times I had there. Hard gueling nasty work helps you grow up.