Not as Crazy as They All Think I Am

Not as Crazy as They All Think I Am

ByBy Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.

from his short story collection, The American Apocalypse.

My family thinks I’m insane. Drinking a virgin daiquiri, I’m sitting on a veranda of a villa in Costa Rica that my grandmother rented for us for a Christmas vacation. I could do with the rum, but I don’t really need it. Besides, I’m trying to make a good impression, trying to prove that I’m not as crazy as they all think I am.

The hills and mountains rise across from a bay that in a few days I plan to go snorkeling in. I’ve been reading Hemingway’s stories of the Spanish Civil War. How inspiring. How disheartening. My life’s more like Bukowski’s. But I’m on vacation, vacation from my unemployment. I will return to the States to nothing. Iguanas sun themselves on the railing. I wish I was more like them, consciously garnering my existence from the nuclear reaction that keeps us alive.

Header Image: Proudcostarican, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons