Wrong Place Wrong Time

by Gillian McAllister

They, mother and son, are a zipper, slowly separating as the years rush by.

“Sometimes,” he says gently, when she’s finished, “the emotions of living something the first time prevent us from seeing the true picture, don’t they?” He rubs at his beard. “If I could go back – the things in my life that I would just stand and truly, fully witness, if I knew how they were going to turn out . . .” Jen stares at Andy, this younger, less jaded, more sentimental version of him. “Maybe it’s that . . .” she says. Watchfulness. Witnessing her life, and all its minutiae, from a distance, in a way. And maybe that’s all she needs to know.

Banter can hide the worst sins. Some people laugh to hide their shame, they laugh instead of saying I feel embarrassed and small.

“Like the hindsight paradox,” he continues, when he’s bought the doughnuts. “Everyone thinks they knew what was going to happen. They said, I knew it all along! but, actually, they would say that no matter what the outcome. Because our brains are so good at considering every possibility. We’ve known whenever anything was going to happen.”

We only think of the bad things that happen, rather than those that, through fortune, pass us by.