749632 - 20. working man

by red jones

part twenty of ?

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larry woke up at the same time every morning. larry was a good person, according to himself, but in his dreams, which he never remembered, he was often a bad person. it always took him a few minutes, when he woke up, to remember what he was and who he was. he was a human being. he lived on planet earth. with many other people who also lived on planet earth. what else? he had to get up and get dressed and “face the day”. and - maybe - probably - go to work. he, larry, belonged to the 41.2 percent of persons on the planet who had to go to work. down from 53.7 percent a mere ten years before. it was not fair but there it was. he had to do it four or five days out of seven. he remembered he had eaten macaroni and cheese the day before which meant it had been wednesday. so today was thursday and he had to get up and go to work. not that he would have stayed in bed if it had not been a day he had to go to work. he would have gotten up and gotten dressed and sat and looked out the window and daydreamed about - what he daydreamed about. we will save that for later (maybe, if we get permission). larry lived on the fourth floor of a ten floor apartment in a medium sized city on the planet earth in the modern world. there were three other apartments on the fourth floor of the apartment building. larry’s apartment was 4-a, shari blaine’s was 4-b, kari wade’s was 4-c, and harry slade’s was 4-d. larry avoided all three as much as possible, which was not difficult, as all four of them were modern world persons. shari and kari were modern women who hated men. harry had a mean look about him that made larry a little nervous when he occasionally encountered him in the corridor or in the elevator. larry put on his thursday clothing. a red t-shirt with the words “you are awesome” on it, which he had won at a raffle at his workplace. a pair of black jeans with the words ‘hand-sewn” stitched on the back left pocket. and a pair of gray mocassins with “hand-stitched” stitched on their inner soles. he took a bottle of mineral water out of the tiny freezer beside his bed. and he was ready to roll. another day, another dollar. he liked the phrase, although he was not sure what it meant, or what a dollar was. to be continued