I remember one late summer night a long time ago it seems. When I still felt invincible and the world seemed to welcome me like a son it had long been waiting. It was about two maybe three AM. I was walking home after a night of mischief with my pals to sneak back in my bedroom window before my parents saw my empty bed. As I marched along a lone solider in the quiet warm california night I passed a man lying in the gutter. It was an unusually dark night, and as he was just outside the curtain of the streetlight I had made no attempt at stealth or passing him discreetly. He lifted his head and said to me
"Boy, shouldn't you be home asleep?"In hindsight I should have erred a tad more to side of caution, but me being the somewhat rebellious and extremely ignorant teenager that I was I replied
"Why? You're not at home, asleep. Why should I be?"To that he chuckled a jolly little chuckle under his breath.
"If I had a home to be asleep in do you think I'd be sawing logs here?"He said rather ironically. "Sawing logs?" I thought. Missing the euphuism.
"Home. I can't remember where that is anymore."He said lying his head down again into the gutter. I stood there in awkward silence a long moment and then continued on my way into the night.
I lay awake that night on my bed thinking where that man had been and how he'd ended up lying in a gutter "sawing logs." What adventures and perils had befell this man and how had they made him forget.
Is there a time in life to start over? Some would say that. Even so others would object, and say that it is more noble to keep what you have been handed. That in the hands of fate your time is carried away on the winds as the chaff is from the wheat.
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