Tomorrow, when they ask who started it all and why, they’ll put your picture on the screen and they’ll show some video of your sons, who will tell a reporter that they haven’t spoken to you since your divorce from their mom and so they can’t say they know why you threw that garbage can through the plate glass window of a Whole Foods. They’ll find your wife tomorrow too, and she’ll tell them that you were very charismatic and she can understand why so many middle-aged men and women followed your lead and started hunting down twenty-year-olds to strip naked and strap to the roofs of cabs so that people still in their offices can toss garbage and sandwich meats from conference room catering trays out their windows and onto the twenty-year-olds’ bellies. They’ll find some of your followers who weren’t put into the police trucks and they’ll ask them if they knew who you were or what they hoped to accomplish.
“HE! IS! OUR! VOICE!” your fifties-ish followers will say. They will be shirtless and they will have bricks in their hands, waiting for the next chance to regroup and tear up the financial district.
No one will know what set you off today. No one will know if you were apprehended or where you were taken. They’ll know only what was done, not why. They’ll know that their parents haven’t been home in a day and they might either be in prison or hitching a ride out of the lives they've spent three decades building.
Late tomorrow, a surveillance video will be accessed and leaked to CNN. It will show a grainy black and white image of you walking out of your office building. The timecode will be today at 3 PM. You’ll stop and crane your head back to catch some raindrops on your tongue. Then you’ll lunge forward and shove a passing bike messenger off of his bike. You’ll stomp on the bike messenger’s torso, and several other middle-aged people who were smoking outside will join you in your beat-down. Then you’ll crane your head back again and howl at the sky. When you take off running, dozens will be following you, as if your howl were a rallying cry. You’re gonna start a middle-aged riot today, and it’s been a long time coming.
Happy Middle-Aged Riot Day!
PS: Buy Bob Powers' new book, out May 27th!
