[ WP ] Sloth , the villain

In reality, I learned it from my dad. Or maybe it is intrinsic to my personality. But it started after ma left and Dad took to spending his afternoons living up to the name brand La-Z Boy recliner angled towards the television, a baseball game flickering quietly, forever on the seventh inning stretch. His home business went up in smoke. 
 
 I could n't blame him, either, maybe that's why I kept looking up to him. Ma, in retrospect, was a terrible person. She'd take and take from dad, his money, friends, happiness, you name it, and I still remember the row they got in when he came downstairs to find her rooting through his wallet. For the dozenth time. Yet, dad cried like a baby when, after preaching conservation and frugality one too many times, she packed up and left without a blink of a made-up eye. 
 
 Still, it hurts a growing boy when he runs home from school all bright eyed. Dad I got an A, I'd announce proudly. And getting nothing in return. Whatever, that's fine, he'd grumble. 
 
 Whatever, that's fine. But maybe it was n't all the father figure. In life I found I've always been kind of a flake. Impressed by my A grade? Well, when it came time to take them, I flaked out on my SATs. I flaked out on my best friend's birthday in middle school. I flaked out on the big playoff game for my high school baseball team. They really missed me there at the end of the bench. I flaked out on my own graduation from elementary school. Third grade me thought it would be more fun to pretend I was sick and then play Legos all day. My mom, I remember, she was pissed. I ca n't believe this, she yelled to dad, the shrill sound easily finding its way through my closed bedroom door. I bought this dress for the occasion, she screamed. 
 
 The nature versus nurture debate rambles on. 
 
 Years have passed, now, and the heart's a little colder. I find myself reclined in front of the television waiting for my twenties to end. My friends, such as they were, dwindled to a bare minimum. They call me lazy. They call me good-for-nothing. Fuck them. 
 
 I flaked on my last friend in his most dire time of need, and it cost him. His story is really lovely up to this point, too. Where I turned a blind eye to the whole college ordeal, he jumped in with both feet, leaving our state for four years and becoming a true man of society. A smart, caring gentleman. We kept in touch due entirely through his insistent, patient effort. In college, as he was burning midnight oils in the library, a cute, quiet brunette and him fell in love. They spent their time together, smiling, talking, loving, and when he came back around my parts after the degree was through, she was in tow. He worked as an intern for an organization finding orphaned children homes and she became a caretaker at a kennel. A real dream team. Within a year she was pregnant. 
 
 Seven months in the complication arose. I guess the term is miscarriage, I never really put the effort in to find out for sure, but there was blood. And screaming. In the car, my friend was driving crazily towards the hospital when the front of the car began spewing smoke like a winter's chimney and they ground to a halt. Their phones they left at home. 
 
 What luck, though, they were a mere two blocks away from my tiny basement apartment I was in the middle of not paying the rent for. What luck. My friend ran, the sound of his beloved whimpering back in the car stuck in his ears and buzz buzz buzzed at the front door. But I was all the way in the back lying in my underwear on my bed looking at the pictures of a Sports Illustrated magazine I had from last year. Buzz buzz buzz. But it was so far away and I was feeling kind of tired and it was so comfortable there on my bed. Buzz buzz buzz. It was probably just that irate landlord anyways. Whatever. 
 
 So the story goes that my friend, maybe not a friend any longer, I do n't really know, or care, stayed outside my door in a panic for ten minutes. When I did n't budge, he screamed at the gods and sprinted back to the car. The cute, quiet brunette was silent, gray, her belly sagging against her legs, the cars upholstery stained red, her hand limp against the dashboard. Blood loss, the paramedics said hours later, was the cause of death. 
 
 And the smart, caring gentlemen could n't live with that in his brain. Maybe it was the red stain that would never quite get cleaned entirely a constant reminder as he drove to and from work by himself. He tried to lay the blame on me, but I think my indifference won out in the end there. Here it comes. My dad just ran in my room waving the newspaper at me. My friend had committed suicide, carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust of the car where it all happened, the paper announced proudly. Whatever, that's fine, I grumbled. 

