The Quiet Game

Now:

The audience greedily reads what I have to say. The bright lights are blinding so I cannot begin to see what is written on the page, but it’s imprinted on my mind, memorized like those flashcards I used to read every night.

It was a Quiet Game that we both lost just minutes after we started.

I had spoken to my mother in the car. She wanted to talk about colleges.

She always wanted to talk about college, about the future, about white picket fences and freshly mown lawns. About three perfect children and a husband who practiced law.

Not any future, THE future. The future I didn’t seem to want any more. The older I got, the less freedom I seemed to have. My life became less and less about what I wanted and more about what was expected of me. These thoughts were roaming through my head when I received the email. As Class President, everyone had access to my address.

There were two words. The audience reads. Start Over?

My answer was only one: Yes. And I gained just a little bit of the future I wanted.