Not a true story ...

I have a journal ... one with a leather cover and real paper inside. It's different than my blog because it doesn't contain anything silly. Mostly, it's fictional stories I make up that in some way express something that's going on in my life. Currently, there are a few things going on that aren't that great. Overall, things are pretty good, but these two things in particular pretty much suck and there's nothing I can do about either, as far as I can tell. Anyway, I wouldn't normally post this kind of thing on here, but I was looking through things I've written and it's pretty much all I've got going on that's worth writing about. This, just to wrap up the opening here, is a bit of fiction I wrote a few months ago ...

Two questions come to mind as I stare at the concrete walls of this basement:

1) How did I get here?
2) Did I mean 'here' the basement, or 'here' the father of two with number three on the way?

I left college ten years ago ready to take on the Scylla and Charybdis themselves if they stood in my way. Now, there were car payments, billable hours and a sea of commitment splayed about me leaving no sight of the modern hero's conquests.

I could leave today. Sure, I could. The wife, kids, cars - eventually they would all be okay without me and I would be off. Things would be exactly the way my twenty-one year old imagination had prepared for. Alas, even that 30 year old scotch waiting for me at home couldn't convince me that this was actually true. It's not that I don't love my wife and my children - I do, really.

You know what I fucking hate? (aside from the fact that I'm not allowed to say fuck out loud anymore) My Toyota Camry ... fucking hate that thing. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid car, but that's just it. Where's my rusty old Ford Bronco? Sold it to a kid on his way to college to help pay for the first house, that's where. It's worn seats, rumbling engine emitting ozone chocking black smoke with every rev ... no airbags, no seat belts, nothing to keep you safe from the trials of the world around you ... This was all now in the hands of some kid who probably didn't get it; he probably never will.

I got it, once. Now look at me. Staring at a concrete wall in what is (potentially) house number two. Its rough, pocked, gray face reflecting back at me blankly as though it were trying to say, "You think you've got it bad. I could've been a sidewalk. You know, where children laugh and play? They write on you with chalk and skid their bike tires across you, leaving impermanent reminders of the happiness of a carefree life. Impermanent, but more meaningful than what I have." And now I'm personifying walls to express my deepest thoughts ... real nice.

This wall, in its longer-than-necessary eulogy for its lost purpose in life, brought forth one key point: despite my lament for my burdens in life, it's not as if I'm trapped under a house. I've made neither enough mistakes, nor enough promises to prevent myself from breaking these shackles.

As I walked up the stairs to the house's main floor, I decided two things:

1) I still hate my car, and
2) There's no way in hell we're getting a house with a basement.