Third time's the charm?

I'm going to write my process analysis essay. Second rewrite. First rewrite occured shortly after I posted my last post.

My mom wants me to stop wearing my brown windbreaker jacket every day to school. She says that it's getting old and ratty, and it's not fashionable. She says people will think that no one will buy me clothes. She does. Actually at some point she told me that she wouldn't buy me any more new clothes, because I never wear them. I just wear jeans, t-shirt, jacket. [It's very convenient. And easy to remember in the morning. Besides, I might as well be consistent.] Now she's complaining that I don't wear the clothes she buys. I said, "then stop buying me clothes." It seemed perfectly reasonable to me. If she doesn't buy me clothes, I don't feel as guilty when the cash register person rings up at Barnes and Nobles and the price is $125.79 [That's including the membership discount.]

Ha. Here I am, only a junior in high school, and I have an office, a laptop [that's connected to a color printer], an ipod, a camera, a cell phone, and a graphing calculator. There are lights and running water and flushing toilets [except in my room, but it'll get fixed...eventually] The pantry is full of food and the refrigerator ditto. Adults like to say that we take everything for granted, when 98% of the rest of the world doesn't have nearly as much. And I suppose we do. But is there really a way to be un-spoiled? To not take things for granted? Sheltered in an affluent neighborhood, surrounded by comforts, will I really care about the kid that's malnourished and infected with HIV in Africa? I hear, and I wish that I could help, but it's so inconcievable, so out in the distance, that it doesn't mean anything. It's not reality. Not to me.

I'm not trying to be cold and self absorbed. It's just so easy.