Living the "Dream"

I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day I won't have to work. I'll be able to sit around comfortably and do as I please without fear of losing my apartment, car, or cell phone service. I have a dream. I have a dream that this reality will be actualized sooner rather than later so I can live happily ever after. This dream is realistic. It is a realistic dream because I know of grown men who (despite their inability to keep any kind of job) are able to live more comfortably than people who worked for forty years saving up for retirement.

In the two years that I have known Flash he has held three relatively easy jobs. The summer I met him, he was working at the YMCA in his town as a camp counselor. That should've been a cake job for a young man with his outgoing personality...not so much. One morning I showed up to see him at work. While the children were off playing, he was in the gym shooting around alone. He told me that his supervisor was cool with this. Shortly before the school year began, he was dismissed.

Part of my pitch for Flash to leave his friendly confines to play for me an hour away (at a school with no dorms) was that I would hook him up with a job. I made good on my promise. Flash was hired to work at an afterschool program ten minutes away from campus. It took two months for him to lose that job. One of the kids was found eating a crayon unsupervised in his designated area.

At the start of his second year, he got a job working at the Athletic Center. Flash was actually doing okay there for awhile until the stress of working at an Athletic Center with few patrons got to him. He randomly stopped showing up for work one day.

A loan paid for his apartment at school. Back home, he lived with his girlfriend in a government subsidized three bedroom apartment that housed anywhere from six to eight people at a time. He didn't have to pay anything because his girlfriend was holding it down with the welfare check.

Flash is living the American Dream.