I have pet birds. Two birds, to be
exact. The first one, Wilbur, can be recognized as a fluorescent yellow, green,
and black parakeet who likes nothing more in this world than eating bananas and
drinking orange juice. She often flies around the house until she realizes she
doesn’t know where she ended up. That leads to an hour long bird hunt to track
her down and make sure she’s okay. One time she flew directly into the spotless
window with full confidence. She seemed physically okay, but my father still
thinks she has had a concussion from that point on. She viciously bites anyone
who gets in her way, making her the bully of the two. My other parakeet, often
referred to as the victim, is Chuva. His name translates to raindrop in Russian,
which represents both his color and body shape pretty well. He is short and
stout and has soft feathers that are a combination of gray, white, and light
baby blue. Never in his five years living has he bitten anyone, not even
Wilbur. They were my Christmas present in fifth grade. Not exactly the blue
Nintendo 3DS that I was hoping for. I didn’t even go near them for the first
year, in fear that they would attack me like in that Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds. But soon enough, I got over
my ridiculous phobia, and now we all live in perfect harmony, except when they
start chirping uncontrollably at one in the morning. 

But my story doesn’t start with my
birds, it starts on a Wednesday, or at least I think it was a Wednesday. The
third quarter of ninth grade. Everyone knows the third quarter is the worst; it
feels the longest, tests become the hardest, and all the major holidays are
over. That day could have been perceived by any other student as just another
day. It started period 7, the time I had lunch. My friends and I would try to
eat in every corner of the school other than the cafeteria. Everyone yelling
over each other and accidentally making eye contact with a person the exact
moment I attempted to bite into an embarrassingly humongous slice of cucumber
was not exactly appealing to us. I would not advise to do the same thing,
however, because 80% of the time we did get interrogated. But that particular
day we managed to sneak into the vacant band room undetected.  My very close friend put on music for us, as
one does. While I accidentally tend to zone out of almost every event that has
ever occurred in my adolescent life, I actually pay close attention to every
song’s lyrics. As the period wound down and we planned our elaborate escape
back towards our lockers, I caught one of the lines of that particular song.
“Because everyone must breathe, until their dying breath.” Of course, it was by
Regina Spektor.

A
few meaningless hours of that day passed undetected without a sound. Now I was
home, reading. To be honest, it was more like reading two pages, forget every
word I just read, and reread it two more times. This is where my birds come in.
Wilbur, expressing her lust for power and authority, started attacking poor
Chuva for the last bit of apple. Of course, she succeeded and Chuva did nothing
but hopelessly accept yet another defeat. At this point, I thought Wilbur
thinking she was on top of the world was rather amusing, because the simple
reality was she was just a little parakeet in a little suburban home. That is
exactly when I put together what Regina was saying. Everyone, but most
especially fortunate upper middle class teenagers, tend to be given the mindset
of what is considered success and what is not. The only route to a quote on
quote successful life is going to college, getting the degree to get the job,
to get the money. Success. But if this is the case, how are these middle age
men and women who are constantly surrounded by other human beings the loneliest
people in the world? Sure, it may pay for phones that are constantly with us
like an oxygen tank, and the trip to the beach to tan our skin because skin
cancer is apparently not an issue. But once these lives are looked at with all
this extra luggage stripped away, then can they be happy? The rich man is in no
way, as a human being, superior to the less fortunate. People are just people.
That’s it. In the grand scheme of the universe, it doesn’t really matter where
we end up. Some may feel rather rebellious and think they are “doing their own
thing”, but everyone holds one same exact feature that we can never change or
adapt. Everyone must breathe until their dying breath.