I spent most of my life finding things to complain about. This is how you got happy on earth. We were so glad to have something to complain about; without it, good wasn’t good, it was just another
thing that happened. Too much money was called inflation, too much water was called a flood, and too much fresh air was called a tornado. God here, it seemed, could never catch a break.
     There was a giant University where I lived, employing half the town and giving us all endless things to complain about. It was responsible for most of the parking lots, it was the logo on posters
lining the street that read things like “DARE TO: repair cleft palates,” and, employing both of my parents, it was most of the reason I was alive.
     Once, I started a conversation the same way that high-school adults often do: I asked Todd what he will do next year.

     Todd had the same answer that ends many conversations among high-school adults: He did not know. He was thinking about lots of things.
     What you were doing next year meant how good of a school you were going to, if any, after you graduated. “Why?” was the aching question. It was avoided at all costs.
     I thought it might be fun for me to say something. I told him that “The University really isn’t that bad.” I told him what he had just told me, that “it is cheap.” I often told people things I did not want to be told myself.
     His parents had been tied at the hip with The University for a long time, just as most people in the town were. They owned a store where all of the people at college got healthy on Sunday mornings.
High school adults mostly became university kids.
     Todd’s name was never really used anymore, and it was lazily made up, without much regard to how that might make Todd feel. So, I think, were most of the names of buildings around here, a few of the sentences, and probably the town.

     I think we were raised mostly for fun, our names and setting decided on the same way that I responded to his question: I thought there should be something to say.