Matthew Dix

I'm sitting in the break room of a McDonald's restaurant in Milford, Massachusetts.

I'm eating an Egg McMuffin and I am not happy.

It is the spring of 1987.

I'm 16 years old and it's not the Egg McMuffin that's causing me to be unhappy because an Egg McMuffin is the most guaranteed source of joy in my entire day.

But not on this day.

I'm upset because I'm about to meet my mortal enemy for the first time and I know it's not going to go well.

I've been working at this restaurant for two months now.

I actually live three towns away in Blackstone, Massachusetts.

But I found out that this place pays $4.65 an hour, and that's $0.20 more than the White Hen Pantry five minutes from my house.

And I figured even though it's a 30-minute drive, the $0.20 will absolutely make up for the time and the gas, which it does not.

But it changes my life in a really significant way because when I arrive here, I discover the joy of a clean slate.

I'm growing up in a tiny town, 82 kids are in my class, so the same 82 kids I knew in kindergarten, and they remember everything.

And so when you want to be something different or you decide you could be something better, no one lets you because they remember everything.

They still talk about the time in sixth grade when I exposed myself to class because my gym shorts were a little too short and my underwear was a little too big and it was a little too much manspreading.

They talk about it to this day.

And they remember the braces and the buck teeth and the bad haircuts and the free and reduced lunches and all of that.

has prevented me from becoming something that I think I could be and being trapped in what they think I should be.

But I've arrived in this new town.

Nobody knows me.

And on the first day of work, Erin Duran comes and asks me if I have a girlfriend.