My Life Life

At first, I decided I would do the responsible thing and go to college. However, college did not go well for me. I blew too much money and cocaine and quickly dropped out. After dropping out of college, I cleaned up my act with much difficulty and began my career as a travel agent scraping up a meager salary. If I could only use one word to describe my life it would be uneventful. I went to work, collected my check on payday, went home, drank a beer or two and feel asleep on the couch watching TV.

I soon found a wife. She was a quiet, unassuming girl but she quickly grew bored with sitting around the car all day with nothing to do and began to resent me. I struggled to earn enough money to buy a house and the best I could do was a mobile home located directly in the dark shadow of a factory. With no air conditioning, we had to choose between a stifling hot trailer or a smoggy pollution-filled trailer that was only about three degrees cooler than it was with the windows closed. While those around me earned money in fantastic ways--writing bestsellers and winning game shows--the most exciting thing that happened to me was a sizeable tax refund. A friend took pity on me and let me borrow their baby for a beautiful baby contest, but I was stripped of the $10,000 prize when they found I was childless. I would be childless for my entire life. At one point, at a crossroad in the board, I had an opportunity to have a child, but money was tight and my wife insisted she have an abortion. We went on a picnic instead.

Meanwhile, my career as a travel agent was unfulfilling. I made enough money, but only because I never bought anything exciting. I watched people I thought were my friends go on trips to Mount Rushmore and tropical cruises with another travel agent (and collecting a Life card in the process). My sales strategy of gentle sobbing and pleas for pity was not helping my business. My marriage was struggling as well. My wife and I never went on trips or bought expensive things. We only bought food and more alcohol than either of us acknowledged to the other. We usually ate separately because the cold silences when we ate together were painfully awkward.

Soon, however, things began to improve. After landing on a "Trade Salary With Any Player" card, I was making $90,000 a year (and watching the college-educated athlete, who had mocked me mercilessly from his Victorian mansion high atop the hill overlooking our trailer, suffer with my old salary). Unfortunately, this did not last long. I celebrated a bit too much and showed up to work drunk one morning. Before my first payday, I was demoted and made about the same salary I was making before the trade. I contracted a rare disease from the pollution from the plant next door which hit exactly when I finally entertained a visitor. Felix contracted the disease as well and word about my pollution-filled disease-ridden dumpy trailer soon ensured I wouldn't be visited by anyone else again anytime soon.

I sunk into a deep depression and soon suffered a very predictable mid-life crisis. My wife found me dangling from the ceiling in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. I quit my job and told my wife I wanted to write the next Great American Novel. She laughed in my face and threatened to cut me with a broken bottle of alcohol when I told her I had quit my job to do it. Demoralized, I took the first job that came along. I became a salesperson for less money than I had been making at the travel agency. I hated my job and myself even more than I had when I was working at the travel agency. People felt the same way and I could hardly walk down the street (or more accurately, the dirt paths around the trailer park) without hearing a disparaging remark about my occupation. I was slandered as a liar and a cheat on a daily basis, but if I was lying and cheating I hardly had the salary to show it.

The next twenty years dragged on. Business was booming for the man who replaced me at the travel agency as all my "friends" who had never bought a trip from me suddenly rushed to my old agency to go on luxury cruises and pricey vacations. Soon after I had quit the agency saw their greatest profits in company history, a trend that continued until the day I died. Meanwhile, my wife convinced me to go on a cruise as well. It was a miserable experience compounded by the fact that she made us go to my old travel agency. I soon found out why after I discovered that she was having an affair with the man who replaced me. Much of the $60,000 I had been overcharged for was used to openly romance my wife. She went to fancy dinners with him as I sat at home alone in front of the television. He even bought a necklace from me that I saw my wife wearing the very next day. I asked her where she got it, expecting her to dodge the question, but she was not interested in such polite denials. After explaining for several hours why I was inadequate, especially compared to the man who replaced me--"my dear Bradley" as she called him--I decided I would sleep on the lawn from now on.

Finally, I retired to Countryside Acres, a small retirement community on the other side of the factory. My wife abandonded me for Millionaire Estates and I lived alone until my death. After my retirement, I became the first college-dropout-former-travel-agent-and-salesperson to become President. The country soon discovered why I was the first college-dropout-former-travel-agent-and-salesperson to become President as I presided over the greatest depression in United States history and was impeached for gross incompetance after sixteen months in office. I died alone in Countryside Acres, happy to have been released from the dismal banality of my painful all-too-long life.