Everyone is hooking up, but what about me? I know. It's a lot more than you want to know about me and my own feelings. I wish it could all be so simple. But all I want is to make out in the backseat of a car with a girl. I have a girlfriend at home who I love very much. She wants me to be a better man, to have my life all figured out so I can spend all my free time on the road, traveling. We got married the summer after I turned twenty-five. We traveled together for a few years, moving from one small town in the Midwest to another. We had big dreams and big ideas. But nothing ever worked out, and life began to feel stagnant. I tried playing baseball, but that wasn't something I loved. Playing ball for fun felt like a chore at times. The team didn't really care. All they cared about was the winning and the glory, so it wasn't fun for me anymore. When we moved to our next small town, I tried to play professional baseball again. I got signed to a minor-league team. But I didn't think it was going to happen because a couple guys told me I was too small. I didn't think it would be possible to break into baseball's big time, so I just tried to forget about the minor leagues and the dream. I did work at a car dealership, and I worked all kinds of jobs at local businesses. I played some part-time music gigs with my old band from high school. We got a call to play at the senior prom of one of our close friends. It was just fun to see some of our old friends from high school and to be onstage again. I told my friend I wanted to quit my job and go back to school. We couldn't see ourselves continuing to work a regular job and continue touring for a band. I went back to school for the summer after high school. I figured I could take a couple of classes for fun before starting school. I was interested in computer programming, and the classes I took in high school were interesting. But I had only taken one class in college at that point. I thought I should do a couple of classes to better prepare myself for college, but the school where I was living had no computer programming department and only offered one engineering course, which was basically a college physics course. I realized I would have to leave college for two years if I wanted to pursue computer programming. The year after I graduated high school I had to stay back and play baseball for the team in our small town. I didn't have any options. I needed the money and would have stayed in school, but it just didn't work out. I got a job as a maintenance worker for a company that built bridges and highways. It was a decent job, but after two years it just didn't feel right for me. I would travel with my band, and I wasn't feeling fulfilled. I was a twenty-five-year-old man and felt like a kid. I really had no direction. I knew I needed to get back into school. I moved to a bigger city in the Midwest and took classes at a community college. My parents helped me out when I was a senior. My dad had always supported me. He had gone to college and graduated, but I think that made him feel like a failure as a father at the time. He hadn't saved any money while he was in college, and he still lived in the basement of his parents' house. He was a good kid, but he just had a tough life, which was why I had to move out after high school. My mom worked full-time and was always stressed. My dad had no other source of income. He never got a better job. He was stuck at the bottom of the food chain, making just enough money to get by. He had a job that didn't help him grow any in the past, and it had held him back in his life. So my mom helped him out with the cost of college, and I was able to get a good scholarship for my engineering classes at the local community college. I met up with the former guy who had given me a key chain. We used to hang out a lot together when we were little kids. I hadn't seen him in several years, but I looked forward to hanging out with him. We were sitting on the sidewalk drinking beers and talking about all kinds of stupid things when we saw a couple guys walking by us. We were all surprised to see each other, and we were all kind of embarrassed at first, but it was great just to be around another familiar face. It was the same small town we grew up in and the same small town I met both of my best friends in at around the same time. I missed those guys. I didn't see them often, but I knew they hung out every day, playing music and drinking beer together. I met them at church a couple times, and they knew a bunch of my friends from high school. But I hadn't seen any of them since then. "You were a hell of a shortstop," the guy I used to know as Dave said. "I think you were a hell of a shortstop," I said back. We talked about our lives since high school. We talked about the few guys we had gone to college with. I told him I wanted to go back and finish my degree. He told me he had heard about a bunch of the guys from high school and college getting together to jam out and play shows at some bars and clubs. I told him I knew about those guys. We should go check it out sometime. He agreed. I asked him if he wanted to spend the night at my house. He agreed again. He wasn't the same person I knew in high school. He had been in the military and gone to boot camp, and he didn't have the same hang-out mentality as the rest of us. He had a girlfriend who was a nurse at a local hospital, and I couldn't say I completely trusted her. At the time, I was working as a dishwasher at a bar in downtown Minneapolis. When I got off work, I met up with my friends. We went back to the bar where we met and hung out together, like old times. It was the same guys from high school, and we had a good time hanging out. We got drunk. We were just drinking until we passed out. It was really fun. It was nothing special. We didn't do anything special. But we had been together in the same place all night, and that made it really nice. # One night in Minneapolis I was hanging out with a group of friends, and I met up with an old high school classmate of mine named John. He had moved to Minnesota from San Diego, and he worked in security at a local hospital. I hadn't seen him in years. He lived in the Midwest for a year or two after high school, but he moved out and went back to San Diego to work as a security guard at a large manufacturing plant. He lived with his girlfriend and her four kids, and they were pretty unhappy. He missed California, but he had to be there. He was back there again, working for a living. I met John while playing with some of the guys from our hometown a few times. He seemed like a really down-to-earth person, even though I didn't know him that well. He told me he was working at a college, helping the students study and get over their hangovers. I told him I was taking classes again and working as a dishwasher. I met up with John and the guys at a local bar. We ordered a few beers, and I made my friend Dave think I was going to hit on him. I asked him if he wanted to hang out with me later on in the evening. Dave was still a couple of years older than me, and he wasn't too much into guys. The guy he was interested in was a girl. So he said he would meet up with me later in the night. I told him I had something to take care of, and he seemed okay with it. He wasn't upset. We all went our separate ways that night. Later on that night, John and I met up again at the bar and grabbed another drink together. He told me how he felt about everything back home in Minnesota. He had a lot of regrets about moving back. He felt like it was his fault he moved back to Minnesota. He didn't know what to do with his life. He was having trouble figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. I told him I didn't know if I was having the same problems. I was playing music again and working as a dishwasher. I was trying to play music with my old band, but it was just not working out. We were a cover band. Every band needs a gimmick, and we didn't have one. We were trying to play cover songs by other bands, and we were a cover band. We didn't have a gimmick like the other bands in town did. We were just a cover band playing cover songs. We were pretty good, but we weren't original. I told John that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, too. I didn't have any idea about what would come next for me, and I didn't really have anything to fall back on. When I was in high school