One more from I once was...

The Implants

My parents had managed to buy a small store along the interstate that ran through the town.  It was the only grocery store, restaurant, tackle shop and gas station in a 25-mile radius. You could get take-out; can goods, and worms all in one stop.   It was situated across the field from my grand parent’s house.  My parents said they had moved because they wanted to get away from the rat race, their ranking for the city.  Though, I knew that it was because my mother didn’t enjoy the thought of living so far away from her parents.
The town was situated in the middle of nowhere.  It had a population similar to that of a small funeral.  Funny that I make that comparison, since many of the townspeople walked around like they had died a decade before I was born and just hadn’t realized it yet.
I was their only child.  The locals referred to my parents as the “implants”.  If you weren’t born there, “implant” was the closest you got to acceptance.  I was, by all rights, really an implant myself.  It was fitting.  Though I was born in that small town, my roots weren’t planted there.  They couldn’t and didn’t identify me by who my people were.  ‘She’s Ida’s daughter; you know, Donna’s kid that went to school with Mike and Neil.’   I was always just ‘that chubby little red haired girl from the store.’