It Went Thataway

At the adjacent table are three men in their sixties who turn and ask me what I’m studying. I look over from my two-hundred-dollar fortress of books and answer, “I’m wasting my time in journalism.” Their reaction is quick—a sober concoction of encouragement and interest.

“That’s a good subject. Do you want to be a news anchor?”

“News anchor? That’s ambitious,” I reply.

My ambition is an absent thing, unseen since my college years. If I saw it now, I wouldn’t recognize it, though it would probably resemble my present life: a fat and tired sloth, a sloth that eats, shoots and leaves.