Hobo (Short Story)

Everyday he wakes up by the dawn, his work at the bank is far away from his home. There is no time to say goodbye to his wife. There is no time to have his breakfast. And what if there is time for both, everything will be in a hurry, no amusement, no feelings, just a filling of a habit. It is a long way to the bus station, and a long journey to work, everyday. It is like every journey in life, it changes. But this journey changes him from a man into a machine. During the journey he starts to turn to be like a cog, has no purpose but to take some papers at the end of each month. He likes to call them, magic papers, because they have the ability to disappear within days. His only amusement was sleeping. He hates getting up too late and going to bed too late.

After years of working, he finally could get a loan to buy a comfortable car to go to his work, and, considering himself a lucky man, he could also get another loan to buy a house near his work. Thanks, to the new house and car, his journey to work is easier, but the magic papers are getting more powerful, they last shorter and shorter.

His wife is a very beautiful woman, because she is a magazine reader, she spends her paper in everything that makes her look pretty, because her work obliges her to be beautiful. She is a receptionist, and she has to be a representative of a beautiful institution. She knows deep inside her that a company hiring people according to their outside appearance is a superficial company. She knows that deep inside her she is not that beautiful, just like her company. But, she is satisfied that the company is helping her to remain beautiful, without her magical papers she won’t be able to afford buying all these cosmetics and chemicals.

When there is time for the couple to meet, they argue about one thing, what to subtract the rest of our numbers in? most probably they settle on one thing, insurance and junk. Like everyone living in this modern life, they spend their numbers on noting but these things: a car to go to the corporation, a house near the corporation, a loan from a corporation, insurance from a corporation, and junk to eat from another corporation. However, the only good time they could have is when they eat together anything.

All the time, they thought they had an important rule in life, he is a banker and she is a representative of one of the biggest companies in the world. Only when that day came, when the wife was going to her job, her vital and important job, she was hit by a car, ironically it was the car of her boss, she died at once, but her company went on that day, exactly the same way it used to run on the other days.

The husband knew what happened to his wife. He realized something funny, something that no one could realize unless something strong let him wake up from that hypnosis he is living at. “I am a slave to money” the man realizes. I am losing my like for papers and numbers, big numbers and big papers, but there is no time nor health to enjoy them, and even when I buy things to get happy, I lose this happiness in queues, reservation, prices, time, expiration dates, taste,.etc. there is nothing called a “Joyful product” in fact, MONEY CANNOT BUY HAPPINESS. Even if you think that you work so that you could have a value. You will die as well as your so-called value.

The man asked himself: “now what to do? I bought the car and the house for the job, not for my family, and for these two things I have to work everyday all the time so that I could keep them, for my master to enslave me. I will go, I don’t need anything from my corporation, they can keep the house, they can take the car, I am happy there is a last resort to man to regain his freedom; I CAN become a hobo. Only those who can could survive. As long as you are satisfied with simple things, you will live happily, because happiness lies in simplicity.