The Triumph of Mediocrity

A man has fallen into place and become happily wedged there

Even if he wasn't quite qualified to be a MENSA cardholder, Phillip was brilliant. His SAT scores had been stellar after a high school academic career of straight A's. Such a long time ago, he thought... Sometimes he stood like this at his kitchen counter looking out at the turned-over Big Wheel trike in the back yard and wondered what would have been different if he had gotten his doctorate. Or even his masters. At times like these, he would chuckle, finish his beer, and think of those good old college days where he studied Pink Floyd and the different strains of marijuana far more acidulously than sociology and theology.

Tonight, he stood by the grill thinking the same things. The last few remaining frat buddies that still lived in town stood around on the cracked cement slab he called a patio. A faded, ripped table umbrella was carelessly furled, and the evening sun refused to cool off. Phillip didn't mind, and he didn't notice how quiet the other men had become, mopping the backs of their necks and looking at their watches.

He was thinking of the day in Theology 201 when he met Linda. Love of his life, mother of his children...pain in his ass. They had both spent more days out of class than in. Phillip would buckle down for a few days, maybe a couple weeks at a time and turn in stellar work. Then he would glide on his laurels until he felt his GPA in danger again. Linda followed him, and they both graduated with a 2.2 GPA and got jobs on the same line at Carter Brothers' Milling Plant over in Chesterton.

Theology, he thought, glancing at the whitening charcoal. I was gonna be a priest till I saw her. She was—

"Phiilll...?!" —She was loud, that was for god damn sure.

"What is it? I'm with the guys. Chrissakes, can it wait?"

Jamar looked uncomfortable, dropping his head.

Paul shot over to his friend: "Chill, bro. Go see what she needs, man. Make sure she didn't poison your food."

"I would if I was her!" quipped Fat Freddie, the fraternity's former whipping boy.

"Eat me, Fred, ya fat fuck!" Phil shot back.

Fred scoffed and shook his head, not very amused. Fred was no longer the butt of the joke, the eternal freshman. Fred was now CEO of Torrence Machine and Dye.

Fred had graduated with a 3.7 GPA and four job offers.

Phillip walked over to Linda, irritated. Jamal could hear snatches of the conversation.

"...don't care what you do that way. He's probably..."

"He's your son, too!"

"Do we have to do this now? I got..."

"Phil, come on..."

"Just get the burgers ready, alright?" He walked back to the awkward group of old friends. He hollered back over his shoulder, "And don't poison mine! Paul's gonna test it, and I don't wanna haul his corpse home!"

Paul sighed.

"Hey, man, you guys remember when we did have to drag Paul home that night? What was that, sophomore year? Man we were so hammered...!"

Paul smiled. "Long time ago, man. You know I joined AA after I graduated? I failed the first year of my masters' course, and I realized I was . So..." He raised a can of Diet Coke. "Probably a good thing, too. Harper, Turner, and Stearns were hardly looking for an alcoholic to groom as the next partner!"

Fred toasted him with a gin and tonic. "Good for you, man. I should probably give these up, but Jesse says one every now and then is okay. If I start drinking the way we used to, though, he said he'll leave me. No question, just gone."

They were all quiet for a few minutes.

"Thanks, Killjoy," Phillip said to the unamused group.

Linda appeared, wearing a frumpy sleeveless shirt and faded shorts, her calves showing varicose veins to the knees. The men said hello, but Phil just took the plate silently.

"I got a shift tonight; Penny's girl got sick, and she doesn't have a sitter, so I have to leave in about an hour."

"Yep. Got it." Phil didn't look up from the grill, arranging burgers to fit them all on.

Linda rolled her eyes and slouched away. She paused halfway to the door and hollered, "Remember you're on third shift this week; don't get too deep in the bottle!"

Phil looked around. "What's with the women, man?"

Jamar shrugged. "Sounds like good advice to me, bro."

There was a ripping noise, and Fred approached. "Hey, Phil, you got a chair I can actually sit in, man? My ass went right through this one!"

"Well stop dropping your ass so hard into my chairs!" Phillip laughed and retrieved a folding lawn chair from behind the defunct gas grill by the fence. He handed it to his friend, chuckling. "Try not to tear this one up, Freddie; it's an antique."

Fred took it and looked at it. When Phillip turned away, Fred looked over at Jamar with a disgusted look. He opened the chair, exposing a scrim of dead and dying leaves, tattered webbing, and a moss-like substance on the back. He set the half-opened chair aside and decided to stand after all.

The get-together had gone quiet again, awkwardly so. Watches were surreptitiously checked again as Phillip serenely flipped thin burgers on the little grill. Jamar looked around at the neat lawn next door, and at the warm deck and cool pool on the other side. He looked at the sagging gutter on Phil's house. He looked around the yard, the weeds, the half-broken toys and bikes littered in the corner like skeletons. Jamar looked at Phillip and raised one eyebrow in exasperated sarcasm. "Man, you just livin' ya best life here, ain't you?"

Phillip looked around, puffed up his chest and answered with no irony whatsoever: "Gentlemen, nobody in the world has it better than me!"