the kids (attempt no. 2), aka Anthony Hopkins and John Lennon

Me. A role model. Who would of thunk it? Not me that’s for sure. Maybe my mom. And a certain ex-girlfriend. She’d probably be happy for me. All successful in an unsuccessful world.

It’s funny. I still think of her. All these years later. It’s been way too long since we last talked. And I miss those talks. But I guess it had to end. Even if neither of us ever ended it. Things happened. Lots of things.

I still write her letters. They’re sort of like letters some of the time. Other times they’re just stories. It keeps me sane. I know she’ll most likely never see them. Heck, she may not even want to see them. Or, god forbid, she may not be around to be able to see them.

It’s not like I can send them to her. The post office shuttered their doors years ago. E-mail? Ha. Use it and you’re writing your ticket to prison. It’s a wonder they keep the thing going for the “public” anymore. I don’t know the last time I looked at my G-Mail or Yahoo accounts. I know from the steady propaganda that we get from “above” that they are indeed still functioning. Over a decade after the events that ended their usefulness. At least to me. And to all those around me.

I look around my house. It’s cold in here. But not nearly as cold as it could be. Why? There are just too many people inside to let it get freezing cold. Body warmth is good in these times. Not like anyone has what it takes to turn on that thermostat. That, of course, still works. But we dare not touch it. The bill that comes with it is not monthly anymore. Not weekly. Not even daily. It’s by the minute. You have to use a the scanner it’s attached to. Either your finger print, if you are one of the lucky ones, or your barcode, if you’re not.

Everyone in this house is what I consider lucky. Accept for John and Jenn. They tried to keep their jobs a little longer than most of us did. They had a young daughter to think of. And hell, I probably would have done the same thing. But, I never got a chance to have a kid. Almost.

Anyway, to keep a job, you had to be scanable. The day the not the government, just a concerned citizens’ group showed up at my office to “make us scanable” I quickly ducked out the back door. I had a bootleg I-Mac that I’d kept for years. It still have an old AOL dial-up connection on it. And that was what we used in the early days to stay in touch. To be “off the grid”. At least as much as possible.

The first few months, no one even thought to look for folks using dial-up as a way to get on the web. The old web. The non-Google, or simply NG, was the way to go. Somehow, Google ended up pretty much owning everything. They knew everything we did on personal sites, which everyone set up -- beginning with MySpace and Facebook -- but evolving into SocialHeaven and SocialHell. A great little novelty. Sign up to be a demon or an angel. Only thing was, they used it. And it seemed to have that affect on people.

Slowly at first. But when the war started in Toledo, Ohio, of all places one day, Heaven and Hell became real. And signing up and staying in one meant you were headed down one path or the other. Neither of which was good.

Not with a scanable code, my boss didn’t know what to do with me. I rigged a band-aid with a code on it, printed up 100s of them and started selling them to folks. It was a way to stay unscanable. I ended up being arrested after doing it for a year. Lucky for me, my sister was married to a lawyer. A lawyer who had the right family connection. His mom was lovers with a Senator years ago. No one knew about it. Except for my sister’s husband. He never cashed in that chip. Until he did for me.

“You know, Werth,” I said to him that day, “I never thought you liked me.”

“I don’t,” he said. “But your sister. I do.”

We haven’t spoken since. But, I know I’d return the favor. Much like Anthony Hopkins does in “The Edge” for Alec Baldwin.

That’s a story I tell. Changing the names to me and my old pal Tucker. The kids all sit around. Funny that I call them kids. Some really are 10, 11 years old. But most are in their late-20s and early-30s. The kind of people that seem to gravitate toward me.

My last girlfriend told me I should have been a politician. “I may still one day,” I told her.

“Always a dreamer, never an achiever,” she replied.

“Who are we kidding, there never was a plan, right?” I replied smugly.

“Why the hell do you have to always quote your damn band? You know, you only love them so much because of her. And what she did to you!”

This was how a lot of my relationships ended. I get it. I’m stuck on her. Like Lester Hays stick’um. What’s a poor boy to do?

“How’d you kill the bear?” the kids would ask half-way through the story.

“Just wait, you’ll see,” I’d say.

“He did it with a skinny, little stick,” Melinda, a 26-year old should’ve been a punk rocker, would always say.

“Awwwwww, don’t give away the story,” the little ones would always cry.

I’d change a few details of the story, including no longer using a stick, instead, grabbing a lead pipe or an empty bottle of Jack Daniels. It just depended on my mood.

“Yay!” the kids would scream when the bear was killed.

“Boo!” they would simmer when Tucker tried to shoot me.

“Ho-Ray!” they’d finally say when I got back to civilization, smarter and wiser than before. And getting the best of my supermodel wife.

“Time for bed, everyone!” I’d roust them up one last time.

“Awwwww, why?”

“We need to go fishing tomorrow. It’s a good day for a feast. Dec. 8 is when a great man -- John Lennon -- died. We shall feast in his honor, and tell stories of what we remember and know of him.”

“Yay!” they’d scream.

All was good for the day. Hopefully, tomorrow would be too.

the kids...(attempt no. 1)

The kids, they all look up to me.

I noticed this happening around the time I turned 33. Why then, I have no clue. But I was an editor at a small-town newspaper, had a staff of three and a bunch of stringers. They were all younger than me. The closest in age was 26. He was a good guy. Name of Jerome. He ended up being the second-most successful reporter that I ever hired. Well, third best if you include Ed, the guy I hired in college.

The kids around me today, they laugh when I talk about newspapers. The good times, I refer to them as. Hell, I hated just about every other year then. Now, I’d give everything for it to be like that again.

“You actually printed stuff out. On paper?” they say in unison on those cold nights when my stories are all we have to get through it without fights breaking out or someone crying.

I’m 53 years old. And I feel every, single one of them right now in this house. It’s right on the beach. Moved into it back in 2010. The last year of normalcy I call it. They call it the year before the shit.

Back then, the United States was a crumbling empire. Today, just 13 years later, it doesn’t exist anymore. First, the money went bad. Then, the food went bye-bye. Lastly, the bombs starting falling and the guns started shooting. I thought I was going to move to New Orleans in 2011. Get a job washing dishes and writing crap on the side. I was two months from my final two weeks at work. I’d been in town setting up things for a week before, during and after my 40th birthday.

That was a great week.

I got really drunk with my friends. It turned out to be for the last time.

I fucked a redheaded stripper. Never thought that would happen. She actually gave me herpes. Never thought that would happen either.

I also fell in love for the last time.

When I drove my blue Hyundai Accent the 1,300 or so miles back home after a great week, I never figured I’d still be in this wood panel-filled house for the rest of my life.

Funny how things happen, ain’t it?

About a week after getting to North Carolina, I started selling off all of my possessions. The economy had been showing signs of teetering on the edge for years, and I was finally starting to take notice. Get out of debt and just survive became my mantra. I think the day I watched the movie “Collapse” on my laptop was the moment I decided to do something about my impending doom.

I sold my video game collection. Got top dollar from a guy in California for it. I sold my baseball cards. Not what I ever expected to get for them, but they were just dead weight to me. I found someone to take all a bunch of old band T-shirts as well.

Finally, on May 14th, 2011, I cashed out my 401k. I sent the entire amount to credit card companies and was completed bad-debt free for the first time since I was 20 years old and my mom paid off my one credit card that had an overdue balance of $348 dollars. Bad move mom. Didn’t learn anything from it.

Three days later, a war broke out in Central America. Someone invaded someone. The details never became fully clear. Some say it was our own troops, dressed like another country’s. Just trying to stir up shit to get a war started.

This caused a panic. Food became scarce. Gas almost non-existent. I started working from home just because I couldn’t drive the 41 miles in to the office. It was actually kind of nice for a little while.

I wrote when I wasn’t laying out sections. I scavenged water and lots of canned food every time I could. “Stockpiling like a madman,” the lady at the newly dubbed $10 store would say to me.

After three days of “war” the news stopped coming from Central America.

Three days later, a nuke went off in Israel.

Four days later, a nuke went off in Milwaukee.

Two more days and one went off in Boston, Cleveland and Moscow. Then Paris. Then Berlin. Then Bagdad. Then somewhere in New Mexico. Then Hong Kong.

The next day, nothing.

Then the news networks all went down.

Then cable.

Then the phones.

Soon, the folks with guns were running the place.

Soon, no one cared a massive hurricane hit the Atlantic Coast. Then another. And still another. The U.S. was fucked. I was fucked. I took in six people -- all friends from up north. They thought my place would be safe from the battles going on. They were right. For all of three weeks.

(i liked the beginning thought here. but hated almost everything after it. i had a great beginning, then i lost it in my head while trying to go from my car to the computer. by then, it had morphed into this. i think, for the rest of the week (ha!) i will try to write this same story, over and over again. until it goes somewhere better).