Leaving Nowheresville
Mr. Nothing from Nowheresville knew a lot about something and everything. He’d seen the world, after not knowing either parent, and being left in a basket (if his life were a black and white Hollywood movie) on the doorstep of an orphanage, where he had no name. Mid-teen years, the boy version of him had been taken in by a lady who ran a rooming house in the Old Town section of downtown. She gave him a key to his room, and to his future life. Visiting the Lady of the Rooming House was a lifelong practice until she passed into the afterlife. He always brought her cheese and biscuits. In the far future, he’d pinpoint the times in his life when major and minor shifts had happened. During the learning on the fly and breakfast for dinner years, and when scrambled eggs were the color of love, he listened to words spilling out of everyone’s mouths, while the hidden inside part of him watched their true meaning with staring eyes. He’d lost and found large portions of life while being in the thick of things in the jungle, where’s monkeys tossed broken branches down at him, inside the dark of night. He was trained to be of use to someone for something, he told himself. When he arrived at his later years, he made peace with parts of his heart, and said “so long, see you later” to the rest of it.