The Top of the Barn

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Nice house, huh? I used to live there. I lived there with George, Fluffy, Guy, Rick, Palmer, and a lot of other guys. We roamed the halls of that house and spilled beer in every single room. We broke the front windows at least ten times.

It was the house I lived in during my senior year of college in Erie, Pa. and I walked right up to it and thought about looking in the windows this afternoon.

I didn't.

What a shithole, huh?

We got tossed out the weekend before we graduated. We spent the last two nights of our college career with our cars loaded with our stuff. We slept in the woods. We all tried to drink a case of beer.

I did it.

And man, it made me sad. Twenty-five years gone. I don't have regrets, mind you, but I thought about the people I loved back then. All of the guys in that house and more. My best friend back then, Lisa, who tried in vain to get us to see the big picture.

We didn't see much of it.

"Man, that's kind of sad," I said as I slipped back into the car driven by a nearly 70-year-old man who works for the client I was seeing in Erie.

"That's 'cause you can see the top of the barn," the guy said.

"Huh?"

"When you're young, you don't see much of the world other than the path you're on as you're going up the huge hill. I think of the barn as the end of the journey. You can finally see the top of the barn."

"Geez, thanks for making me feel better," I said.

"What're you worried about?" he asked. "The barn is in full view for me and I got my keys in my hand."

On the way home, I put the I-pod on and drove, letting the memories flood my mind.

Standing at the deli as the space shuttle blew up...getting invited to dinner by my buddy Chris and having to bounce a check to pay for the meal...drinking beers with Rick as he told me about losing his mom...Lisa calling to yell at me...Fluff pissing in the box where I kept my high school ring...George breaking the front window as he pulled the pool cue back for a shot...all of them sitting on the edge of my bed and talking me out of going to an important class so we could drink beer...beer after beer...the stereo, the kitchen table without legs, Palmer pulling up with everything he owned in the back of his truck, the keg in the bathtub, Fluff's Dad waking us up and yelling at us about the devil...

On and on.

The barn is bright red. It's down there at the bottom of the hill, I suppose.

"You gotta' keep walking forward," my companion told me. "You look back too much, you sort of lose sight of where you're going."

Matt is coming home from college today for the weekend. The world seems huge to him and the possibilities are endless.

The walk goes really fast, though, and no regrets here, as I've said, but the barn seems to be right there at the end of the path.

I'm going to pace myself.

I hope.

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