Jinxed It

I guess I was too young to really remember what jinxed it. Maybe it was the oil embargo or the dealings of our tricky president. All I know is things changed. No longer were we going on nice vacations to Six Flags or taking trips to the beach. No longer were we having pot roast on Sunday afternoons, instead we were having Hamburger Helper and canned chicken and government cheese. No more trips to Sears for school clothes, instead we’d swap clothes at the swap meet. And although times did seem to get better, they were never really the same.
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I dreamed me and my mother rode the river in a large john boat, hitting different encampments swapping the goods we had with others. It was almost like a travelling minstrel show, minus the minstrels. Wearing raggedy clothes bartering with others down the river. Swapping stories and warning each other about what was going on down towards Florida. I remember I had gotten pretty good at telling stories, while my Mom had a talent for making blankets and clothes from scraps of cloth. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was all we had in my dream.

Somewhere in the dream we were staying with some kinfolk downriver near Florida. The way down there was long and treacherous with storm debris strewn along the way. The waterway was low, and we couldn’t paddle near shore for fear of stumps and roots just beneath the surface. But through the will of survival our little band of misfits made it to the settlement. There we were greeted by our family and bedded down for the night at their once proud home in the middle of town. There we were greeting with warm cooking and even an old television with an antenna ran by raggedy pair of solar panels. 

With the batteries charged I sat down on the floor to watch the staticky picture of the evening news. As usual it was the same propaganda we’d been hearing for years. That once the evil had been rooted out prosperity would come back to the land, if we would just suffer through a little longer. I slept on a bedroom floor huddled with several other kids and teenagers. While the grown folk carried supplies back and too to the boats on the river, and that’s when I woke up.

Even now as I write all this down, I wonder how the truth of the first paragraph and the dream of the rest tie together. At the moment I’m really not certain, other than the fact we as a nation are fed propaganda from both sides of the political fence. Life there is reduced to worst case scenarios, where if one side doesn’t win, then we’re all doomed. But there are no such thing as worse case scenarios in real life, nobody gets anything they went. If you do, are you really satisfied? So take a moment, empathize with how the other half lives. Then ask yourself, “Is my way or the highway really worth it?” Don’t jinx it, life can work for everyone.