A ride with my son

*An excerpt from a ten minute car ride with my son*

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this,” my son began, “but I never expected to live past 25.”

I gripped my steering wheel a little tighter. Here we go….. “Okay.”

“Ya know, because of my mental illness and stuff. I always figured I would’ve found a way to off myself by now.”

Just let him talk…. “Okay….”

“So, last year when I hit 26, I decided, well, shit, I guess I need to get my life together and get stuff going, ya know? I started to make plans. All kinds of plans. And then, it was like BOOM. Ya know, if my life was storyboarded out like a comic strip, it would go like this. One panel would be me, looking optimistic, my arms over my head, ready to Carpe the Shit out of that Diem, and then the next panel would be a newspaper floating past with headlines like, “PLAGUE SHUTS DOWN WORLD”. Then in the next panel, it would be me, in a hazmat suit, staring blankly out on a decimated world.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, I swear, I know that the world doesn’t revolve around me and Covid has really fucked up a lot of people’s lives but sometimes, it feels like my life has been just been leading up to a massive, cosmic punchline.”

“Damn, dude.”

“Yeah…..I know. So, we’re having pizza for dinner tonight?”