The Do-Over

As a child, my brother Julian had perfected the Do-Over.

If we entered a grocery store and Julian was not allowed to tie his shoe before we selected a cart, or we selected the wrong cart, or we walked down the produce aisle instead of the cereal isle, and he was confident the cereal isle was not one to be missed, then he would demand we start over. We would have to walk back outside into the Arizona heat and enter the store as if for the first time, following his proper procedure.

Though my parents struggled to delight in Julian's mastery of this concept, I was mystified. I hadn't yet learned to bend space-time in this way. Things would happen, even things I didn't like, and I had to live with it.

How simple we must have looked to him,
tethered to displeasing circumstance,
forced to live one life one time.

— 2016