Doctor's pills.
I woke up this morning, turned on the TV
It made me feel quite fat.
I went to the doctor, he gave me a pill
Said, "This'll help with that".
In the classroom, the teacher scoffed
Said there was no hope for me.
I went to the doctor, who issued more pills
Said, "We'll up the dose to three".
Back at home, I cried alone
There was no one to call.
I went to the doctor, he assured the pills
Would shortly fix it all.
And in the night, my mama hides
From the wrath of Papa's drinking.
I went to the doctor, he said the pills
would ease my negative thinking.
That's when, dear doctor, the answer struck me
And gratias is owed to you.
So 'fore taking these pills, two bottles in all
I bid you sir, adieu.
Another afternoon.
“I so don’t want to end up like that.”
She spits it out with scathing contempt, in resounding harmony to the chords of underlying judgementalism composed by she and her friends.
She would not be like that. Heaven forbid. She refers to the scores of people - five, ten, fifteen years her senior - with a sort of pity polluted by self-righteousness. It is a pleasurable past-time to sit with her peers, clicking their tongues and shaking their heads into their decaf skinny lattes.
I so don’t want to be a slave to my mortgage. I so don’t want to leave it too late to have kids. I so don’t want to stay in the same job, so don't want to live with in-laws, so don't want to raise my kids in the same way my parents raised me…
And in this fashion the afternoon meanders. Days of youth spent on sweeping vows of idealism, passionately drawn, fervently defended.
And what becomes of her in ten years’ time? In the strange clarity of retrospection, will she and her friends wallow in their mistakes and weep at the disparate selves that they have unwittingly become? Or will they laugh at their kindergarten thinking in days of old, painted in primary colours and simplistic assumptions?
There is no way of knowing. But perhaps that explains the cloud lingering above them. It has the unmistakable scent of fear. Of what may lie ahead, how they might change, who they might become. A fear that drives them to these conversations, again and again, soothing their insecurity, reassuring their fate.
Still, there is no way of knowing. Life meanders on, as does the afternoon.
