Life of a Working Man (Prompt 27)

You come into this world crying, well at least most do. But soon you learn to smile. As a baby you are insouciant. You don't care about worldly things. You always have a smile on your face, showing off your toothless gums. You’re an epitome of what it means to be carefree. You’re a sponge, constantly absorbing your surroundings, learning from it, teaching yourself. Your language is limited to a smile, a frown, curiosity and crying. You find it all so simple, so utterly easy. The reason behind this naiveness is that you are yet to be integrated into society. You are in a cocoon, protected and cared for, by your loved ones. Everyone who meets you greets you with a smile. You are famous and never ignored. You will grow up to be a doctor or an engineer, they say, but you can’t understand their gibberish. All you want is your sleep and your food. And ofcourse, someone to wipe off the mushy thing that comes out of your innards.

You soon find the floor is moving far away. You start to understand a lot better. They read you books and teach you language. You hate it, but you’re a sponge. You take it all in. You begin to speak. Language is so useless, but taller people don’t understand if you speak to them with expressions. How dumb are they? You start covering your body. It warms you up. Makes you sweat. What the hell was wrong with being naked? Your diapers are replaced by a thinner substitute. You soon learn you can’t excrete whenever you like. It leaves a stain. You learn to potty train. Oh, where did your caretakers go? Why won’t they do this anymore?

Soon you are going to something they call a school. You have to be a doctor, they remind you. You have to study hard. Engineers are also acceptable, but doctors are preferred. You drift through the years, making forgettable friends, being punished, rebelling, learning to be made fun of, being jealous, being petty, being infatuated, being heartbroken, being average at sports and less than average at studies. You don’t understand maths or science. You don’t get what’s the point of social studies, especially geography. They continue to teach you English. Man. what the fuck! Ironically, that is one subject you suck at. There are so many rules. You keep forgetting the rules. ‘Aren’t you able to comprehend what I’m trying to say?’, you ask them and they tell you, ‘That’s not the point!’. Somehow you clear your high school, enough to just about prevent shaming your parents. They aren’t proud, but at least, they aren’t blushing with remorse.

The next curve ball they throw at you is college. Half of your friends aren’t even attending. They say they are grown up now, so they’ll start living adult life. They start to work. You feel a tang of jealousy, but soon you forget all that as you enter college. You are surrounded by like minded individuals who have had, more or less the same journey as you. College is a great differentiator. It screws up your life, your dreams, your ambitions, all the while telling you this is the time of your life. You fall into this trap. You feel the carelessness you experienced as a child. You are free to choose your subjects, your specialisation, your closest friends and your frat. You learn to drink, to smoke, to smoke up, to drink while standing upside down. That’s not all. You learn to make love. You are a raging wild animal. Your hormones are going crazy. Soon, you forget all about your studies. You are either intoxicated with alcohol or sex or both. Man, college is awesome!

The next minute, or so it feels like, college is over. You are thrown out into the world to find jobs. ‘It’s time to start earning, son. It’s time to be your own man,’ your father tells you. He says he is proud, but you are quite sure he is just joyful that he doesn’t have to pay for your stupidities anymore. You start to sell yourself. You pay an agency to make an inch perfect resume. You still don’t get calls. The ones you get ask for past experience. ‘I’ve just graduated,’ you say. ‘Well, we prefer someone with experience,’ they reply. You had dreamt to be a writer, but you can’t seem to earn at all with it. You quash your dreams and take the first job you get. You start as an assistant of an assistant. Your job mainly involves getting coffee for the assistant and rechecking her mails for her. You work in the day and smoke up at night. Years go by. Finally, your boss has resigned. She says she wants to pursue dancing, her passion. You are promoted to be the main assistant. You are thankful.

You find a nice girl and settle down. Soon you start to love her. You have kids and now in your late thirties, you are leading a comfortable life. Your college loans still loom over your head, but you aren’t troubled. You have started to let things slide. Your wife is usually irritated at you, shouting at you constantly. Your children scream all the time. Those greedy motherfuckers! You find inner peace. You bottle in your frustration. You lose your hair. You can’t seem to get hard anymore. Your joints hurt all the time. You don’t have any friends. Your favourite sports team seems to suck more than you at this point. There is nothing to look forward to in life. You are flowing through the motion. The smile that you always had as a baby is lost. You don’t smile anymore, neither do you cry. Your curiosity has been murdered. All that remains is a perpetual frown on your face.

You spend the next thirty years being bottled up, hardly able to balance your personal and professional life. Your wife ran away a long time ago, with your neighbour. Your kids have finally moved out of the house, since they say they can’t live with a pathetic indolent like you. You don’t mind. You’re old. You don’t care about things. You have enough to scrape by till the end of your days.

Standing on the veranda of your slum of a house, steadying yourself with a cane, you look over to children playing on the road. You smile. You realise now that as you grew up, the world snatched away your smile from you. Society is a bitch. These children remind you of your childhood days. Oh, what would you give to be young again!