The Rise of the Creator-Consumer, Part IV

Continued from Part III
(start at Part I)

IV. The Passives (reprise)

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever think things would be… I don’t know… different?”

She looks up from her book, slightly concerned. “Different how?” she asks guardedly.

“I don’t know,” he sighs, silencing the voice of his god with the Mute button. “I mean, we have all this shit, or at least we’re making payments on it. But we sit here most evenings, we don’t really have a clue about what our kids are doing… and did you have any dreams when you were younger?”

Her mouth tightens involuntarily for a moment, caught between annoyance and amusement. It’s finally happened, she thought, he’s having his mid-life crisis. Aloud, she says, “Sure. Didn’t you?” Let him talk it out.

“Yeah,” he laughs nervously. “Kyle kind of reminded me. When I was his age, I wanted a Super-8 movie camera. I was going to interview a ghost in a haunted house… make my own movie, like Kyle and his friends. But I couldn’t afford it, and neither could my parents.

“What about you?”

Trapped! he had opened up, now it’s her turn. “Well…” she waves her book. “I wanted to be a reporter, an investigative reporter. I guess I’d have been a cross between Lois Lane and Woodward and Bernstein. But we couldn’t afford J-school —”

“J-school?”

“Journalism school. I got a scholarship for Annenberg, in California, but it wasn’t enough. I went to vo-tech, and it was good, but… well, I started a mystery novel about an investigative reporter, but never finished it. It probably wouldn’t have gotten published anyway.”

“Hey, you never know. You can prob’ly write better stuff than that,” he gestures dismissively at her paperback.

“This book won an award,” she sniffs. “I didn’t even try to get mine published.”

“Do you still have it?”

“I don’t know. And I’m not sure why we’re even having this conversation.”

He laughs. “You say we don’t talk enough all the time; now we’re talking and you don’t know why.”

She opens her mouth to retort, then stops. “So what brought this on?”

“I guess it was Kyle and his movie-making buddies. He’s supposed to be home in a little bit. Hey, what do you say we walk down to the Thurmans’ and see what they’re up to? That’s where he is.”

She looks at him for a moment. “You know, I don’t remember the last time we went out for a walk. It might be nice.”

To be continued…