Happiness.

There were lyrics running through his head as he walked out of the school and into the bright, sunny spring afternoon. "The sugary smell of springtime," he thought; it seemed so fitting. Thanks, Ben, he thought, walking slowly and calmly down the front steps and onto the sidewalk. It's lyrics like yours that create the soundtrack to life's experiences. The cars in front of the school were parked in a semicircle, creating a sort of blockade between him and the parking lot. The sounds of life had faded and left only the chirping of a couple of robins and, what to anyone else would seem an uncomfortable silence. The lawnmower that had been running when he walked into the school ten minutes earlier lay quiet and abandoned on the nearby baseball field.

The man found the silence comforting, after all, he was the cause of it. He looked up, closing his eyes, and let the warm sunlight wash over his face. It was then that he heard the voice of the bullhorn, muffled at first, then growing in volume. This was quickly accompanied by the voices of what must have been dozens of people. He looked at the cars that separated him from the rest of the parking lot and saw the flashing red and blue lights, and about twenty pistols pointing out from the open car doors. "Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air!!!"
He looked down at the MP5 submachine gun in his hands. The noise of the crowd of people from behind the police cars was building and he felt the pressure again inside his head. "Why can't you be quiet," he said softly, his annoyance growing. "I just want the silence."

He sat down on the grass of the school lawn near the sidewalk, the gun still in his hands. He looked down at the gun, examining the side of it with seeming curiosity. "PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON OR WE'LL SHOOT," came the booming voice again, the bullhorn making it sound like it was coming through a radio. "There's just too much noise," he whispered to himself. "I had to stop the noise."

He stood up slowly, the gun still in his hands, though pointed at the ground. "I just want some peace and quiet," he said, looking to the cars lined up in front of him. "I JUST WANT SOME QUIET!!," he said, raising the gun toward the bullhorn. Dozens of bullets tore through his flesh before he had time to raise his gun completely, each exploding out the back of his body followed by sprays of blood and pieces of organs, bone, and brain matter. His limp body fell to the ground, blood pooling instantly around it in the grass. The guns had stopped firing. No one spoke. There were no sounds. Just, silence.

A Wish for Oz.

The text came from Michelle this morning when I was in the lab at school attempting to print off the dramaturg I'd stayed up all night writing. I'd left our warm flat no more than twenty minutes before to venture into the cold air of early February. Apparently our son decided to wait until I was gone to roll himself over for the first time. Figures.
He'd come very close to accomplishing this feat a few weeks before, but hadn't quite gotten his weight to shift. It was then that I realized that this is what fatherhood is. You may have seen the saying that, "Motherhood means touching poo." Well, fatherhood means missing out. I was lucky enough to be there for the first time he smiled at us, but I will most likely be at work when he crawls for the first time, or at school when he says his first word, or conducting research on quantum theory when he says his first word.
Anyway, along with a severe lack of sleep, this merely added to an interesting day.