Average.

A is for Average

Bennett is of average height for a spiffy, young man of his late 20s. He has an average job that gives him average income and average satisfaction—which is better than none at all. He has an average girlfriend named Mindy, who is average in bed. He likes her, but the “spark” that fairytales sell doesn’t exist in their, overall, average relationship. The only thing that’s unaverage about Bennett is that he’s as hairy as a clogged drain. Mindy nicknames him her Teddy.

            They get married, have two average-looking children with average intelligence in an average house. Their children grow up, get married to average spouses, and Mindy and Bennett settle into old age, and die average deaths. What is an average death? Perhaps from old age, and illness due to deteriorating immune systems. But who cares? In the end, they’re dead, and that’s pretty average.

B is for Barely Average

Now imagine Bennett of average looks and intelligence on his way to an average day of work, when, unaveragely, he has to take a new street to work. Not out of spontaneity, as the street he usually takes is going through some construction, and he is taking a necessary detour. A blind man stops him at the light and asks for a cigarette. Bennett doesn’t smoke, so he says he’s sorry, and drives away as the light turns green.

C is for Complicated Averageness

The detour is unnecessarily complicated, and Bennett’s lost. He’s never been to this part of town before, and now he’s hopelessly late for work, but he refuses to call in sick and take an opportunity to take a day off from work. He likes his job. It is decent, with decent pay, and he works with decent people. Being lost doesn’t mean he has an excuse to bail out on work. He has an unaveragely strong morale about his responsibilities.

            He calls the office, explaining the situation. They manage to talk him back to the main road. One his way out of that seedy part of town, at the last spotlight to safety, familiarity, and freedom, a blind man is at the intersection, making his way across the street. Bennett waits patiently as the light turns green. He waits to make sure the man crosses the street safely. The man’s foot touches concrete, and he turns and gives Bennett a friendly wave before continuing his journey.

            Bennett goes to work, unable to identify the feeling the man left in him. He finishes work early, goes home to Mindy and makes passionate, unselfish love to her, which soothes her lonely, and recently feeling abandoned, heart.

            Life eventually ends average.

D is for Disastrously Un-Average

Returning to Bennett’s complicated detour, the blind man isn’t a man. It’s a beautiful woman with long, dark hair, a straight nose, and a mouth with full lips.

            Bennett is immediately taken by her. After all, due to his dedication to his work, Mindy packs up their teenage children and returns home to Ohio to live with her parents. Being a man who respects his wife’s wishes—unaware that she only wanted him to chase after her, just like in those average romance movies—he continues life in that average house by himself.

            Thus, this encounter with that pretty girl is a relief. He sets on his blinkers at the light and helps her across the street. He introduces himself—Bennett, 32, marketing assistant, would be honored if he could walk her across the street—takes her hand and helps her. She thanks him with a smile and continues on her way.

            They never see each other again, and Bennett eventually dies a painful death due to pancreas cancer; his last moments remembering the softness of the mysterious blind woman’s hand.

E is for Exceptionally Un-Average

Let’s say that ending D is too gruesome, and that it’s too assumptive that the first and only meeting with the beautiful girl was the cause of Bennett’s pancreas cancer.

            Bennett returns to the light to find that, at 8:30 every morning, the girl is there. So every morning, at exactly 8:30, Bennett is waiting for her.

            There is hardly any time for them to have a decent conversation, so Bennett invites her to a café in the area. He discovers that her name is Anna, and she tutors blind children at a church nearby.

            After a couple of months of paradise, Bennett asks her to marry him.

            She says yes.

            Three years of marital bliss, Anna tells him that she used to be married to a man named Jason who left her for a woman who could appreciate his manly physique. She asks Bennett to, please, develop the film taken during those years.

            Bennett promises he would.

            Instead, he throws the roll of film in the back of his truck, and gives her photos from his own failed marriage in panic when she asks him for the developed photographs.

            A year later, Anna is diagnosed with leukemia and passes away.

            Bennett has nightmares for months afterwards, and it’s always the same one. He’s surrounded by fire, and Anna’s voice looms over him like the smoke that’s suffocating him with his own guilt. In the fire are pictures of Anna in compromising, sexual positions with her ex-husband, Jason, whose face Bennett couldn’t see, but had the body of an Olympic swimmer. In the end, Bennett is burned alive to Anna’s malicious laughter.

            He tries to find the film, but can’t.

            Eventually, he goes crazy. He babbles at his psychiatrist appointments, and one day, overdoses on his medication on accident, and ends up living out his guilt, in whatever way that may be.

F is for Freedom

Too much, and perhaps indicates too much religion for some’s taste, no?

            Anna’s ending is the same: she passes due to leukemia.

Fate is fate. We cannot change it.

            Bennett feels guilty. He finds the roll of film in a box of Anna’s possessions, questions how it got there when it should have been in his truck, and realizes that before Anna had been hospitalized, she had cleaned out his truck. He goes to develop the film only to find pictures of Anna holding up paper that said “I love you, Bennett. Thank you.”

            Bennett cries for months. Loses some weight, bald spot becoming more distinct, and he begins praying to a higher power—God—but doesn’t know if he really believes in an all-knowing, all-creating, all-powerful God. He begins to search for other options and settles comfortably with a branch of Zen Buddhism and starts meditating. He never reaches Nirvana, but he lives an honest, charitable life, and regardless of whether or not you believe in karma or an afterlife, he feels content and thinks of Anna often.

            He dies a quiet and peaceful death, and somewhere, beyond logic, he and Anna meet again; all is forgiven, and this is where the story ends. If you are quite unhappy with the religious undertones (or perhaps, not so subtle) of his life journey, it’s safer to stick with option A, or write your own. For now, this is his, and this is as average as it gets.