Plastic Wrapped

They wrapped me in cellophane and set me in the middle of the plaza where I waited while the sun and rain eroded me and pigeons defecated on my head. People asked me what was I waiting for. Through the plastic I shouted that I needed someone to release me. Their well-intentioned fingers fumbled and eventually gave up and they went about their lives until I was just the man wrapped in plastic at the center of the plaza. I became a meeting point. Kids would say, “Let’s meet at the Man after school. Bring your ball.”

Sometimes a lone kid waiting for his companions would absent-mindedly bounce his ball against me. It hurt but I was so lonely that I didn’t object.

 Eventually time — blessed time! — and the elements degraded the plastic enough that I could wiggle free. My first stop was a clothes line where I grabbed some pants and a shirt. I didn’t find any shoes but after having been stuck on that pedestal for so long, I loved feeling the rough pavement grating against my soles. 

I walked for a long time until I reached the river. My feet — tender and uncaloused — were aching. I sat on the shore and let them sink into the coolness.

As the aching subsided, I gazed at my reflection. My face shone brightly on the surface of the current. It held steady even on the moving water. For years I had struggled to break free and now, at last, I was free. Time had played its part but so had I. I had never surrendered my dream. 

For years I was a plastic-wrapped monument whose majesty was never unfurled. Now there is a paunch which appears at certain angles in photographs, a fringing of gray hair and an insolent and ridiculous bald spot expanding on the top of my head. 

But none of this, I assure you, matters at all. 

My days are mine. My dreams are mine. My destiny is mine. Free of mortgage or lien, I own these things outright.