Play/novel.
Each chapter is a day of the week and another eight years later; a single set and scene.
Sunday: age 8 — In Sunday School, unsure about God’s existence but open to learning nonetheless; also trying to socialize with the other kids, whom he wants to be friends with and whom have already accepted his slightly-older brother among them, but they all think he's ‘weird’ and they shun him for a reason he can’t comprehend—if there is a reason at all. Although it wasn’t his first choice, one of these kids (another outcast, shunned for his overt hyperactivity) accepts him as a friend.
Monday: age 16 — High school is a drag but at least he has his friends (one being the hyperactive kid from Sunday School). The bell has rung and they’re all leaving; the friends are going to hang-out but he declines, saying he has homework; however, in an uncharacteristic rarity (solely to endear himself to a girl he likes in the friend group), he stays with them and instead of hitting the books, and he has a good time with them through the evening, going onto the football field as the sprinklers go-off, and running in the night heat—but, in the quiet moment he finally gets with the girl he likes, she confesses that she likes his oldest friend, the hyperactive charismatic one from Sunday School.
Tuesday: age 24 — His parents are riding him about finding a job, but he can't do so easily given the economic climate and the specific field in which he chose to get his college degree; and he doesn't want to stoop for a menial job—mostly because he fears getting stuck there, but superficially because he wants to put his degree to use and prove himself; he says he wants to be an entrepreneur, but he has no resources or network to exploit. He’s prideful, naïve, and aimless. He goes out drinking with that oldest friend—the hyperactive one—whereupon the friend confesses that he's gay, and he doesn’t know how to tell his parents because of how seriously they take their religion.
Wednesday: age 32 — Now married and with three young kids, he is working a job he doesn't care for but, after a near-decade of menial jobs, finally being in his field has a sliver of satisfaction to it—except, even though he’s putting his degree to use and he’s making a livable wage, he doesn’t feel validated; he has this existential realization that he doesn't want to work in this field… but with a family to house and to feed he can't just up-and-quit. This feels to early to be a midlife crisis, and yet that’s what he can’t stop shaking: he’s already at that dreadful place in life where it’s too late to start over but too sickening to imagine going any further down this road. Also, his boss is an ass-cunt.
Thursday: age 40 — He’s since tried entrepreneurship, on the side, but it didn't work out; he did, however, find a slightly-different job and is now seeking validation through his hobbies (sculpting—or maybe pottery or metallurgy, so he’s always “going out to his workspace”, the remodeled shed; working with his hands to escape from reality). And his kids are now 14, 12, and 11, and they're all histrionic—a tiresome bother owed to their adolescence and puberty, which seem to have stolen their lovable qualities from the toddler years and replaced them with angst, severity, and overreactions—so he calls his parents to apologize for putting them through similar shit, and they laughably say it's okay, “It's what all kids do.” Later that evening, his oldest friend and the friend’s new husband come over for dinner.
Friday: age 48 — His mother died six years ago, and now he is at his father's funeral with his family—his wife and kids as well as the family of his slightly-older brother, who he hasn’t much spoken to in the past three decades—and he realizes he needs to spend more time with them all because he's next in line to die, and he could die anytime now, and he is unprepared for death (in terms of his estate as much as his legacy and his unrealized goals). He spends a good period of time tending to the emotional needs of his kids (now 20, 18, and 17) and has a renewed, earnest interest in their lives. Later, he and his estranged brother reminisce on getting into trouble as kids and talk about why their relationship fell apart, and how they're sorry.
Saturday: age 56 — It is a day of rest, spent relaxing in the den with his brother and oldest friend, sipping whiskey and playing billiards; the three of them are four years into a modest entrepreneurial venture, building decorative rock walls, designing pools, and sculpting landscapes. His eldest child calls and asks when “raising a baby” gets easier, and how to cope with the stress, and he gives advice; his eldest is a newlywed with a new baby, and his youngest is in graduate school for law and doing well, but the middle child got into drugs and he's having trouble turning them around; his hyperactive friend (long-since tamed by time and medication alike) suggests that maybe this is a lesson the kid will figure out on their own, because sometimes you can't help the people you love the most, no matter how hard you try, because they're too consumed by internal pressures and negative self-talk to realize that not only are there ways out of this but that people who love them (who not only do exist, and love them, but love them unconditionally) are offering ways out with an extended hand. He realizes, at that moment, that he was the same way as a kid—oozing with insecurities, fear, and incessant self-criticism—and that his middle child is more like him than the other two, and if he can use this realization to coagulate some wisdom, garnered from the whole of his own life experiences, then maybe he could save his child from learning this lesson as late as he did, and could not only get them off of hard drugs but to somewhere stable and secure; not to make his middle child “catch-up” to the successes of his other two kids, but to simply find for his struggling child—the facsimile of his own younger self—a little bit of peace and happiness.
Original document created 01/03/2018.