Maybe This Time

I love reading the New Yorker. Especially their short stories. However in the last couple of years each story has become more gut wrenching than the last. Broken Relationships. Failed Marriages. Friendships, Families torn assunder. Poverty. Murder. And last but not least, Death. Beautifully written. Devastatingly depressing. I'm inevitably left with a creepy feeling that lasts well into the next day, sometimes into weeks and months. (Although, here I take creative license with time).

Each time I open a new issue, Maybe this time it will be different... pops into my head. Maybe this time it will be different, is a well worn phrase used by those of us, I being a chief example, who are blissfully self-delusional by nature.

Maybe this time always, without fail, plays out the same. Definitely NOT better. Or different. But the SAME. Or WORSE.

I've lived most of my adult life wrapped in the blanket statement Maybe this time it will be different. I say "blanket" because it covers most of the territory I live in: men, jobs, my weight, Hollywood Films. Although I did like Gladiator. This is something my friend Kenny will never forgive and continues to torture me with ever since. Here you might say is the perfect opportunity for me NOT to say, Maybe this time he won't do it. Alas, in spite of my better judgment I can't stop wishing it.

It's not that I haven't learned since I turned 18 but somewhere in the back of my brain I can't help the initial impulsive to say it. Sometimes I'm successful. So this weekend as I excitedly opened my New Yorker and swiftly turned the pages to the fiction section I found much to my dismay "A Death In Kitchawank."

Oh well. Maybe next time.

(c) 2010