In your dull eyes, you’ll see your missed opportunities, in your receeding hairline you’ll see your spectacular failures. You’ll trace the wrinkles on your aging skin and wonder “what if”, what if you had tried harder, what if you talked to that girl you like, what if you had gone on to college. You open your bedroom door and greet your wife that you met at your 2nd job; the one where you were employed as an ass kisser or a paper pusher. She’ll ask you if you want to meet for lunch today, you’ll say yes, your son will walk in and without saying a word take some food from the cupboard and jump in his car and drive off for high school.
Your clock on the wall chimes 8 am, it’s the same day you have always had for the past 17 years, you remember the days before you met your wife, all the great times you had with your friends. But now you have moved away, never to meet again, and all because your boss felt that you were “too good” to be working at your old job and you had to move to the other side of the country to work for half of what you were payed and 10 times as hard. Your son hates you for this, he left his friends and his life behind, but does not realize your left your life behind to.
You’ll remember the time when you were 17, your dad lost his job and you had to move away from all your friends, you never had the courage to talk to that girl you liked, not that it would have ever mattered. You hated your dad and never forgave him, then he died of a heart attack 2 weeks after your high school graduation. Your mother is all alone now in a retirement home, broken hearted that you never vist and almost dead.
You, just like your son, went through every day of high school with hope for the future, only to have that hope smashed to bits at every opportunity. Every time you had an idea somebody took it for theirselves, every time you had a chance somebody shoved you out of the way. You had hopes to go to a good college, but your fathers death ruined it all, there was no money left behind and your mother just could not work. Every day you had to put on your stupid hat and walk 2 miles to McDonalds, every customer thinking that you were a failure in high school and that’s the only reason you worked there.
You remember charming an asshole who decided that you “had the right stuff” to suck his cock and shove your fist up his ass every chance you got. Slowly you worked up from cold caller to management, then you met your wife. Your mother could no longer take care of herself without you, and she had to move into a home where the nurses stole her stuff and made her wear used adult diapers.
It was not soon after that your new wife was pregnant with your son, you had hopes for him. You did not want him to have to go through what you went through in high school, so you started a fund that you put money into every month for college. Your newborn son’s unknowing eyes of the world stared at you and he smiled, now he won’t look at you.
Then you wll realize that you are crying, your wife will ask you what’s wrong and you’ll say nothing. It’s already 8:30 AM, time to work at a job where nobody knows you and nobody cares about you. As you drive to work you remember the first time you drove a car, it was two years after you graduated. You recieved your license and you had to buy a 20 year old car with duct tape for windows. You were happy that you could drive any where you wanted then, when you drove you did not have to worry about your life or your mother. You could easily drive off never to return, but your hope for the future was still stuck in your mind, “I’m going to do something great” you think to yourself. As you go through the intersection a semi truck blows through a red light, your car and body are smashed against the cement, you are dead.
Your wife goes to your son’s school, he knows nothing about your life and what you had to go through, he thought you had it easy, that you had everything you needed. He is called to the office where is mother is waiting, she tells him what happened to you and they both cry in each others arms.