(Sound of baby crying. A teen dad
enters, holding a bottle and a bib slung over his shoulder. Crying stops and he
slumps down in a chair with a sigh of relief.)
Time
didn’t used to exist. Existence itself, when I was little, seemed full grown.
Grass was greener, the sky brighter, sleep sweeter, because everything was new.
Brand new. The gray curtain of everything being old news is thrown over
everyday life with each new experience. I can literally remember my first
fishing pole. That purple rod with Looney Toon’s Taz character depicted on the
side; an impulse buy by my dad at Walmart.
Growing up is like a burden placed on your back. Not because of
responsibility but because of knowledge. Like when you realize for the first
time that evil is not so far away. When you grow up you pretend to be drunk to
look funny, but then your cousin gets into a drunk driving accident and dies at
age nineteen. When your dad tells you that his wallet was stolen out of his
car; not in the city where he works, but right in your garage. Life slowly gets
scarier and certain habits are adopted to cope with fear, or at least make it
less intense. But today I want to sit in my mother’s lap again. I want to
volunteer at the local library with her, before I had to go away to
kindergarten. To wrestle with my dad after suspensefully awaiting his arrival
home from work. Now I’m older, and I need to be someone else’s security, while maybe
I still need some myself.
(Baby
starts crying again. Dad gets up and walks off stage.)
