999,999 IN A MILLION

As I enter what is typically considered the second half of an average human lifespan, I realize more and more that my dream of being a hero in one way or another simply cannot be realized. I'm not special. I'm not brave or tough. I don't possess super strength or intellect or intelligence. I'm nothing more than a 31 year-old redhead with a high school education, who draws a GS-05 salary. My life consists of numerous failures, and no accomplishments since being voted prom king in May of 1997.

So many people point to the fact that I have a daughter as being a great accomplishment in my life. Don't insult my intelligence. Any idiot can create a child. I've seen too many welfare case, illiterate crackhead lowlifes create child after child to believe that the act of doing so is somehow miraculous or virtuous.

I don't want to be one of those people that uses a blog to broadcast a bunch of "woe is me" crap for the faceless masses to laugh at. But today has just been an awful, awful day. I think I have finally realized that I am nothing more than average, and even below average in many aspects. Let me list a few things that maybe I could have done, or done differently:

1. I should have gotten a bachelors degree ten years ago. There is no excuse for me to have spent more than a decade in college with nothing to show for it.

2. I never should have gotten married. I felt as if God had sent me the perfect woman that I had always dreamed of, and I always thought was too good for me, and for some reason, she loved me. She just came out of nowhere, and for the first time in my life, I felt that I had met a woman that I was willing to forsake all others for. It turns out that the decision to get married began a chain of events that systematically destroyed what little life I had before that. I know now to never put anybody before myself. The ones you love and trust will be the first turn on you at the first sign of trouble. Fuck marriage.

3. I should have stayed involved in bodybuilding. I'm just a shadow now of what I could have been. I was on my way to being in the kind of shape I always wanted to be in. I guess I have to blame marriage for that failure too.

4. I should have continued my martial arts training. I think I could maybe have actually become a real superhero if I had continued to perfect my hand-to-hand fighting skills. While I'm sure I could still defend myself against petty thugs if need be, I'm definitely no Batman.

5. I should have continued to perfect my turntable skills as a DJ. I never felt as alive as I did when I was in front of a crowd, and every track I played, every cut I made, would compel them to stay on the dance floor and keep moving. Not to mention, as DJ-Edit, Jayson was quite a big hit with the ladies.

These are only five disappointments and/or failures that haunt me to this day. But even more discouraging than that is the realization that I am not special. Every little boy grows up dreaming of being a fireman, a police officer, a fighter pilot, or an astronaut. They dream of being a hero. But the sad fact is that steel foundries, janitorial services, and fast food joints are filled with the men those little boys became, and they dream no more. I am one of those men. I am a dime a dozen, a needle in a needle stack, a black dude at the Million Man March, or a white dude at a NASCAR race. I am 999,999 in a million.