Let’s go back thirteen years. Let’s take a trip to elementary school, when the best the bully could do was turn me upside down and shake out my thirty-five cense for milk that day. Things seemed to be well and I was my mother’s best child. Until the day came when I drew a picture that struck my first grade teacher as odd. Then things all went down hill after that. Let’s all try to save the children. Let’s save the nation’s future. Let’s all get on our hands and knees and pray to each our own God to help the children. So we send the little boys and girls across the street to the neighbor’s house. Haley and Tommy’s house; because that was the only house left on the block that wasn’t struck by divorce so there was a kind of father that these little kids never got a chance to know. A father that loved their kids, and would do anything for them. The kind of father that you see in the movies that kind of resembles Beaver Cleaver’s dad. But when the only father left on the block that still lives in the house he got married in turns out to be a pedophile and wants to put your little boy in all his “home movies”, we shake our heads in disapproval even though we forced this tiny little seven year old on him. I’m sure if he would have known that his actions would ultimately lead to his daughter’s suicide he would have rethought his little obsession. Now we need another chance. Beg to the high heavens that your baby boy won’t be tainted by this pervert. Because you can’t deal with it; because you won’t deal with it. You refuse to spend your hard earned money and your even harder-to-come-by time talking with your son about what really happened. Now the answer just seems to present itself. Jump in your minivans and take the kids to meet their real fathers. Some go to prison, and some to the state hospital. And no one asked poor little Johnnie if he wanted to meet his father. But someone with authority told you over an eighty dollar session that it’s important for a boy to have a male role-model in his life. So you volunteered the son-of-a-bitch that you divorced years ago for the job. In this case Daniel is in the state hospital. With a terrible disease that no one can quite figure out. Johnnie has never met Daniel, and now is as good a time as any to introduce son to father. Johnnie’s waited his whole life for this day, and nothing can tear the smile from his face. So it’s disappointing and unnerving when Johnnie blacks out and regains consciousness as his father stands over his body with his hands wrapped firmly around his neck, shouting to the guards, “Kill him, it’s the only way.” A good swift blow to the head with the guard’s nightstick renders Daniel’s fingers unusable around his son’s neck and he hits the floor with a loud thud. Blood begins to seep through his thick black hair and makes a pool of burgundy regret. And they all fail to notice that Johnnie has seen it all; that this will scar him more than anything. So all the attempts have failed and frustration is thrown at our feet. Fast forward six years. All the kids on the block are grown up. Smoking cigarettes and drinking their parent’s beer. Such a shame that at such a young age, their futures have gone to waste. But what does it matter? Because out of all four, none will graduate from college and two will die before their twenty one. So let them burn it up now. Now that everyone knows what it all means, now that someone with a power trip has explained to them what happened when they were younger and why the only father that was left on the block is now in prison with a nickname that’s not to be repeated. But the amount of pain that Johnnie is feeling isn’t compatible with anything he’s gone through before, so he insists that you call him Jonathan because the things that were happening seemed like they were happening to a whole different kid. So peer pressure kicks in and they all search through the basement to see what the father has. Nothing exciting; books and tapes and old memories that he’s been carrying after him since high school. Until one of them comes up with some explosives. And instead of blowing up the house, along with them in it, they take it to the next neighborhood to see what damage it could do if placed in a mailbox. They wait across the street in the bushes while their futures are threatened to be condemned to jail cells in Juvy. The thing explodes and one of the kids freezes up. They think he’s died but he still has a pulse. Not one of those kids can tell anyone what really happened because then they’ll all be in trouble. So they keep their mouths shut, but no one believes poor Jonathan when he says he blacked out and really doesn’t know what happened. Because his mother never told anyone what happened that day when he met his father for the very first time. And that would result in Haley’s suicide because he came back looking for answers and she wasn’t all that elated at returning the favor. But now we pull Haley aside and lock her in a room with Jonathan. Because peers are the only ones that understand. So they talk, and you’re listening the whole time. But you can’t make out a word. The only thing you get from the whole conversation is, “What you deserve is a better father and brother.” Yeah, honey. Tell her what she deserves. Tell her what its like on the greener side of the lawn. Because you’re Mister Know-It-All and you can tell her what life is like without the pain she’s endured. And this is exactly what she needs to hear right now. Especially with a new wound pounding with her heartbeat and her enormous headache. They kiss and make up and it’s like two fumbling bodies not knowing what kissing really is. Like they haven’t seen it in the movies and watched their parents do it a million times before. Things take a turn for the worst and Jonathan’s mother finds out from the news anchor on T.V. what really happened that day in the woods. So on a rainy day in the dark after dropping Haley off, she informs Jonathan that their moving. But what she doesn’t know is that she’s moving because once again, she can’t deal with anything at all. But she knows the truth and won’t ever admit to anyone but herself that their moving because she can’t stand to look her friends in the eye after all that’s happened. So the little boy who froze up that day had a little stay in the hospital and things were back to normal when he came home. No one really understood why he froze up like he did. And Jonathan would be the only one to find out that his feet were cemented to where he was standing because he couldn’t just run away from the scene like the others. He just couldn’t shake it: watching a mother and an infant blown to pieces because she checked the mail before going in the house to change the baby’s diaper. That’s a scene that will be with him forever. Jonathan and Haley knock on his window and ask if he wants some fresh air. They take a little walk and catch the neighborhood bully up to no good. Johnnie blacks out and wakes up with an ache that covers his entire body and no one to talk to about it. And Jesus Christ, what a poor troubled kid he turned out to be. And there’s nothing Jonathan can do about it. And it was all because of that one day in the woods after the explosion; that was the day he stabbed the neighborhood bully. So now he sits in his room still decorated with puppies and clowns in all different shades of pastel because he never grew up; never had the chance to. And by the looks of how his life is panning out, he never will. So the distraught mother of the boy who froze up called Jonathan the very next day and told him to never call again. Because it took her an hour of her precious time to calm down her son and help him pick up the model airplanes he was working on, even though Jonathan has no recollection of them coming down. So the day comes when Jonathan has to leave Haley at the curb with a puzzled look on her face as she chases the moving truck down the street, while he’s holding up a sign that promises he’ll come back for her. He sheds a few tears, then flips the pages and starts a new entry in his journal. The same journal that he’ll save for the years to come, not knowing they’ll play a huge role in the man he’ll become. Fast forward another seven years to a college room where everyone looks freshly torn from catalogs. All Xerox copies of each other and you can’t tell them apart. A blonde dressed like a whore sits in his dorm room servicing his roommate. He walks in anyway and pays no attention to the act. He tells his room mate to get dressed because their going out tonight. So they end up going to the pool hall together and Jonathan ends up explaining to a stranger the similarities between a worm and the human brain. He explains that eyeliner and charisma must go a long way because even a freak like his room mate can get some action. So baby, give it up. You know you want to. But think twice, baby Johnnie, think about what you’re doing. There’s a reason why you can’t remember most of your catastrophic life. Reliving it through the journals you’ve saved could force you to wake up twice as demented as you already are. With no one to save you from it. You’ll end up more like you’re father than you ever thought possible and you’ll have no one to thank but yourself with no recollection of why you are the way you are and why everyone keeps telling you, “I told you so.” And that’s where the story ends because everything was always all about the two of them. And he didn’t put up a fight when they hauled him off to jail because he beat up some poor guy walking across campus. No one would understand that the damage done went back at least seven years. And jail was a dirty place, so pray, Johnnie boy, to the Blessed Virgin Mary statue on your cell mate’s dresser that you won’t die before you get out and go back for her. But these days you can’t seem to remember anything, which presents a problem. And all the help you get nowadays is the advice to just be patient because these things take time. You think that a few punches thrown won’t make that much of a difference, but what you don’t realize is add a few burly guys and that means your life is in their hands for the taking. So after this disastrous journey all that you’ve gained is the knowledge that everything you’ve ever known isn’t really what happened. And that your story has so many holes in it from when you blacked out it’s not really a story at all. For all you know your mind could be playing one giant trick on you, and you couldn’t tell the difference. But you really haven’t lost much, just your sanity and your grip on reality. So who knows how the story really ends. Because the way things are looking is like nothing you ever suspected. And nothing will ever be the same way again. So this is where it starts, where you start feeling like you’re coasting through life in a borrowed body because nothing around you is yours anymore, and there’s no amount of screaming that can change that. So you end up burning everything tangible you’ve ever accumulated because you know who you are and you don’t need a bunch of stuff to keep reminding you. For everything you’ve been though, everything will be fine, because it’s like you’re living another life. So in the end, everything really does work out for the best, but you wouldn’t have thought so in the beginning. Because the life you led as a child with an innocent name like Johnnie, is a completely different life than you’re leading now as a man named Jonathan. [yes, this was inspired by 'the butterfly effect.']