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A Story

There once was this little boy, an ordinary boy of no distinction, who often dreamed of living "the good life." His father had just returned home from work, and this little boy was sad to see the defeated look in his eyes. Hands hardened by his handyman work, hands with those perpetually dirty finger nails, sluggishly wiped his brow. He forced a smile when he realized that the child was looking at him, but his charade was so poor that he didn't fool the little boy. He knew.

A cold bottle of Shaffer beer to wash the grime away from his throat was the extent of a reward allowed him. Since he had six children to feed dalliances were few, so he just drank and sighed the sigh of the weary.

Tomorrow, he would be gone by the time the child arose -- off competing, with so many others who were just like him, for the odd job that would provide for his family. The child barely knew the man -- his hopes and his dreams. The child looked forward to Sunday mornings -- when his father usually made breakfast -- but that was about it, and that's sad. Looking back, I know that he cared, and I can even understand how it was that he eventually lost hope and disappeared. Still, that little boy knew enough about his father's life to know that he did not want to follow in his footsteps.

Today, the fear still controls him. The thought of eking out an existence, and of having his family dependent on a meager income -- an income that was always in jeopardy of stopping -- urges him to continue the struggle. Laziness and lack of imagination drive him to distraction. He knows that short sightedness kills more people than do bullets -- even in New York. He doesn't fear failure because he realizes that an unexplored opportunity is in itself a failure, possibly the worst failure of all. He also knows that life is precious, and that it is preciously brief -- he can hardly believe that he has already outlived Christ. He has failed, but he has learned from each failure. Mostly he's learned that he doesn't like to fail. So he tries harder. He wants others to be like him because he knows that the best way to learn is to teach. He worries about those who don't care enough to worry about themselves. It makes him sad. Although he practices expressing clarity of thought, he's misunderstood -- like everyone else. But he knows that he can not dwell on this because there's too much to be done.