My Trouble is My Trouble
What would my sixteen year old self say?...
It’s midnight and I lay awake in my middle-aged bed
There are a jumble of adolescent thoughts cannonballing around
Inside the temple that is my mind
It has been invaded by a concept so pervasive I cannot escape it
Yesterday, on my favorite radio station,
The morning personality posed a solemn enquiry
Sandwiched in between the alternative rock and jokes
He asked, “what would the sixteen-year-old you punch you in the face for”?
I laughed at first, because I am a badass
I play guitar, for shit sakes, and bass and drums
I paint my nails black like Ozzy, skull rings on my fingers
What could possibly make my younger self punch me in my face
But then, as I sat in traffic, my laughter died in me
Would my younger self, at the height of my youthful rebellion,
See this man that I have become and think the same as I?
Or would he be angered by the existence that I inhabit?
And a burning, nagging, gnawing doubt began to grow inside
And now I am awake when I should be dreaming
Because I know the answer to Woody’s question
I know what my sixteen-year-old self would punch me in the face for!
Of all the things that I have done and become
there is but one sin that I deserve this violence for
It is many things but I think I can sum it up in a single word
It is an over simplification but still I think he would be angered most by…
Compromise!
Now I am not meaning when your wife asks you what you want to watch
And you say, “whatever you want,”
Even then knowing it’s going to be something you hate
That is an act of love, and of sacrifice…a noble sacrifice!
I am not speaking of when you are walking down the frosty streets
And some dumbass says to you, in an annoyingly cheery way,
“MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!” and you want to scream “BAH HUMBUG!”
But you smile and say, “Merry Christmas, dude!”
I am not even opining about sharing our country with others
Others that believe differently than me
And live lives that I cannot understand
That is simply an act of not being…not being a dick!
What I mean is that time, when you were young, and full of truth
And instead of taking your guitar and making it wherever
You took that other stupid job
Because it was “the right thing to do.”
That time when you let yourself talk us out of going
Going somewhere and doing something
And you sat at home and did nothing
because we were scared
That time when that person in your life that you loved
And needed more than the next note in a guitar solo
And you let them go and never told them
Because “you would only make their life a mess”
And all the missed opportunities and missed steps
He would not understand those things
Because I don’t
I don’t
About the Creator
William King
Gen X Dad, Musician, Writer, Artist and Visionary. These are the thought that invade my mind. I share them with you! Do you feel lucky! YOU SHOULD!
Comments
There are no comments for this story
Be the first to respond and start the conversation.