Buttered Toast

John was an extremely boring man. He lived with his wife in a house in New Canaan, Connecticut and took the Metro North to work everyday, but he had grown up in Cleveland. John drove a 2011 Toyota Camry. He was an accountant in the offices of a construction company that built many office buildings in New York City. He knew these office buildings like the back of his hand. He had no children, no pets. His life revolved around his wife and his job. 

Every morning John woke up at 5:45 am. He ate a piece of buttered toast with his Shredded Wheat and black coffee. He would put on his brown or navy blue suit with a white shirt and a black tie. He would get in his Camry and he would drive it to the Metro North station in Norwalk, Connecticut to catch the 7:11 am train. He rode the train for an hour and thirty minutes before arriving at Grand Central Station. John checked into work, a square, bulky, fifty-floor, brick building. He sat down at his desk and approved expenses for the construction company all day. He kept his door open, but his interactions were still limited. Every day John ate the same lunch, a ham and cheese sandwich on Arnold’s nine-grain bread. If offered a pickle, John would decline. John did a reverse commute back to New Canaan every night and would sit down and watch Wheel of Fortune before going to bed at 9:00 pm. 

To spice things up, every once in a while he would grab a box of holiday decorations for his wife, who loved to decorate their Colonial-style house. John was a boring man. 

One morning John woke up and put on his slippers. He walked into the kitchen and said good morning to his wife. “I wake up every morning with the same thought in my mind… Same breakfast, same clothes, same job, every day is the same. I have no purpose… I’m bored” John said, looking down at his, soggy, bowl of cereal and cup of black coffee, “I’ve felt this way for a while now.”

“John...”

“Maria, we have been married eight years now. Since then, we have not traveled, never had children, nothing.”

“So, what are you saying? Am I too boring for you?” Maria said.

“No…” John said, looking at the ceiling “You’re not boring. I mean, there's just more to life than what we have here. We have lived together for so many years. Since our wedding,g our relationship has been at a standstill. Nothing has happened.” John continued, eating a spoonful of Shredded Wheat, “I am 45 years old and have the most boring life.”

“So? What do you want me to do?” Maria said, as her eyes started to water.

“I don’t want you to do anything… I wanted a real life. I wanted to take some risks. I wanted an adventure.”

“Why are you saying this? Is this because of your dad?” She says, starting to stand up.

“No!” John yelled, throwing his bowl of cereal on the ground. “This is between me and you. This has nothing to do with my dad. I am bored. We have always played it safe.”

“What, you just want to leave me? Take all we have made and throw it away. All the memories, all these years down the drain?”

“Yes,” John replied as got up and left the room. He then filled a bag full of clothes, opened the front door, and walked out still wearing his slippers. The door slammed behind him and he stopped right outside. 

Maria sat silent at the breakfast table, trying to process what she had just witnessed. She buried her head in her hands and tried to take deep breaths. She took one final breath, took a sip of her coffee, then got up and locked the door behind him. She whispered under her breath, “Why, John?”

When John heard the lock, he realized what he had just done. He felt relieved, looked back at the door one more time, and then left. Once he got in his car and started to drive, he realized he had nowhere to go so he headed to his job. He then got on the Metro North and planned for an hour and thirty minutes what he was going to say.

“I quit,” John said.

“What? You what? I can’t hear you!” John’s boss, Mr. Stevens responded. Mr. Stevens is an eighty-year-old man. He cannot hear well, but his work ethic is impeccable. 

“I quit. I am moving on from construction” John replied. 

“What do you want to do? Still can’t hear you!” 

“I quit! I do not want to be in construction anymore!”

“Jesus, don’t you dare scream at me, John! But why do you want to quit?” the boss asked, “You cannot afford to quit, besides you are our best employee.”

“I will find the money!”

“Money is not just lying on the street, you have to work for it!” The boss screamed. As John headed for the door. On the way out of John’s office, a few people in the hallways looked at John. He seemed different to them. Maybe it was because he was wearing slippers in the winter,

or maybe it was because he was dragging a duffle bag full of all of his possessions. John did not know where he was going.

John walked out onto the street. There was slush on the ground. His white slippers had grey stains on them from the walk over. The Marriott logo on the slippers from a business trip to Providence was barely visible. His navy blue pajama pants with pink flamingos were also wet. They had wrinkled up from the slush splashing around. Suddenly someone stopped and looked at John.

“John? John! It’s me, Paul” He said with a concerned look on his face. He could tell, something was wrong with John, “What’s up?”

“Oh, where do I start…”

Paul grew up on the same block as John in Cleveland. His lifelong aspiration was to be an astronaut, but he settled to work at the Ohio DMV. Paul and John were best friends through high school and college and still trusted him through adulthood. He had come to New York for a convention. Paul took John to a coffee shop where they sat down and started to talk. They talked for many hours despite the odd looks other people gave John, considering he was wearing his pajamas and slippers. 

“So, what’s wrong?” Paul asked John.

“My life is boring. I am bored with my wife, my job, this city. Even my favorite color is boring. What type of person likes beige?” John replied.

“Two things; one, beige is a great color. Two, I think what is happening is more than just you being boring. Is this about your dad?”

“Why do people keep saying that? It is not about my dad!”

“John, think about it, I’m just as boring as you, and I’m not sitting in a coffee shop in my pajamas.” 

“It is not about my dad.”

“Are you sure about that? There is only one way to find out.”

“What do you mean? I don’t even know where my dad is. We haven’t spoken in decades.”

“Well, I met this guy at the DMV convention who could help me find any name or address in the country,” Paul said as he pulled out his phone and started to call his colleague. After five minutes Paul was able to track down John’s father, with a city and address. “Your father lives in Las Vegas.”

“Las Vegas? No way am I going there.” John said passionately, “I said I didn’t want to be boring, I never said I wanted to be crazy.”

“You just quit your job and left your wife. You have nowhere to go. Do you want to be boring for the rest of your life? Where do you expect to go from here? You’ll never find yourself if you don’t go to Las Vegas and confront your father.”

John and Paul sat in silence for a moment, then proceeded to go their separate ways. John was thinking about what Paul said as he walked down the street. He realized that Paul might be right and that if he did not confront his father, he would never know why he was the way he was. John then walked into a J.C. Penny down the street and picked up a pair of khakis and a white button-down shirt. He looked at himself in the mirror and realized he was being boring again. He then hung them back up a picked out the brightest neon green shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. As much as it hurt him, he bought them and changed into his new outfit. John was headed to Las Vegas. 

On the flight to Las Vegas John ordered an iced water and crackers. He tried to remember his dad. He remembered nights when his day would not come home until the early hours of the morning, not knowing if they would have money for food in the morning. He remembered not knowing if he could go to a good school because his family was in so much debt. He remembered fighting between his mother and father that would last for weeks. He remembered the insanity that was brought to his family because of his father.

John had booked a room at the Hampton Inn Las Vegas/Summerlin. He thought that the other hotels were too crazy. He also had no suitcase so he figured he would not be there for too long. John looked at the information given to him about his father. He got a map and found the street address of his father’s home. Before leaving his hotel room he took a bottle of complementary off-brand tepid water left on the nightstand by the hotel staff. John then got in his rented Jeep Cherokee and drove to the address.

Once John arrived at the address he sat in his car for a few minutes. He listened to the Las Vegas weather report as he figured out what he was going to say. As John walked up to the door he noticed his father's house was a Colonial-style house just like his. He noticed there was a Toyota Camry parked outside and as he got closer he saw a Wheel of Fortune bumper sticker on it. John then knocked on the door. 

A man wearing khakis, a white Polo Shirt, and Johnston and Murphy dress shoes opened the door. The walls of the house were beige and John could hear the Wheel of Fortune theme song playing from the other room. The man said, “Hi John.”

“Hello, Dad.”

“What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in years.”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure my life out recently. We need to talk.”

“Well… Come inside, John.” John’s dad said and he gestured for him to come inside. “Have a seat.” John sat down on a brown couch as his dad went into the kitchen, “Would you like anything to eat or drink? I have Wonder----” 

“Stop Dad,” John said interrupting his father. “You left me. You left a seventh grader and his mother alone for decades. No explanation or anything. You were just gone with nothing to say for yourself.”

“I’m sorry John. I don’t know what to say. Your mother and I, had problems. It was all my fault. I am sorry.”

“Why? What problem was big enough to leave your family?”

“John… I was in debt. Huge debt. I was obsessed with gambling and I lost all my money. I lost all the structure in my life. I came here to win it back.” 

“So? You never came back!”

“After you graduated from college I tried to come back. When your mother would not take me back I was lost. I implemented a lot of structure into my life. I follow a strict schedule and I work as an accountant for The Hertz Association at the airport. I’m happy now.”

John started to realize that although he had implemented extreme structure into his life, something was still missing. He had a good job and he was married, but his life was not complete. 

As John finished talking with his father and exchanged contact information with him, he wanted his father to be a part of his life again. As he walked outside he saw the mountain ranges of Nevada. He saw mountains as far as the eyes could see. He had never seen anything as beautiful in his life. The buildings in New York could not compare to the majesty of the snow-capped mountains or the beauty of the red rocks. He thought, maybe structure was not what he needed in his life, but like the mountains, he should reach for the sky and follow his natural passions. He remembered the joy nature had brought him before his father left and how he was always able to think clearly in the outdoors. He realized, that he had not just come to Las Vegas to find his father, he had come to Las Vegas to find himself. 

John dropped his jacket and started to walk west towards the mountains.