Report From the Middle :: Not Cool

A Little Something for Your Truffles
by Pat Darnell

This is the story of one man's life, written in second person:

You are young and innocent. You have "feelings" for a certain girl, but she likes some other guy.

You are in a band. But it isn't cool for your age group peers, because it's a stage band -- and you play the clarinet.

You go to Boy Scout Summer Camp every year until Middle School. Your troop is a group of tough guys led by a Scout leader who is a Korean War Vet. You find out the troop camping next to yours is a Scout Troop full of homosexual adolescents.

You get to High School, but you are the wrong color. You're White.

You go to College. Great to be here, and you have feelings for a certain girl; but she has feelings only for the football team -- the whole team.

You move to the big city. You get a job or three. You find you cannot support the lifestyle you think you deserve.

You find a girl. Feelings for her, eh! She marries you anyway, you have a child and a dog, a mortgage, and taxes and a yard to maintain... but she decides she likes guys taller than you.

You get divorced. You never see your child again. And you get taken to the cleaners, and end up trying to kill yourself. But that you fail at also.

You find a small business owner. He thinks you are a genius. You help him and turn business around to double what it was. The little Township where the business dwells, has a thug for a mayor and that mayor and his gang decide they do not like your partner because he is Chinese. The Township maneuvers and the business is lost...

You move from job to job, and versions of this story is repeated seven times. You are a middle manager genius who fails to understand that you should never have had feelings for the girl when you were still young and innocent.

That's today's Report from the Middle where the women are strong, men are not cool, and the children are all able-bodied.