Short Story: Thin walls

Prady Doddala
Jul 10, 2017 · 6 min read

Just another Sunday

Illustration by Prady

I cannot begin to explain how boring my life has turned into.
If it helps you to understand, I would like to say that the most exciting thing
I’ve done from 5 years is to take Fred out to Savannah, beautiful day it was, seagulls squarking and Fred tried to chase a few gulls on the seashore.

Fred’s our new dog, we adopted it on the spring of last year and since then it has become part of our family.
I’m not much of a beach person, but when it comes to taking a private trip in my imaginary world, well, I can’t complain.
With my wife Katie and two kids there is hardly any time to do some fun stuff, I don’t really remember what I used to do back in the day.


There is a big presentation coming up tomorrow which will be a huge factor in my yearly appraisal, if at all Alan (my manager) remembers. As a natural procrastinator I pushed my grooming session to the morning but you know Katie won't let me slide on it. She cries, “Get your ass back to washroom and shave that hippy beard!”. That's how she treats me, just like an overgrown child.

As I enter the washroom, our thin walls are transparent to the music from the next house kid. He plays like a junior Hendrix and I love it.
Washroom has become one of my places, not because of the imaginary thinking pyramid it provides me, but I get to hear the music that I used to love and now I am listening it anew. I hardly remember how the bronze strings sound on the touch my fingers, the mahogany wood feels like. I absolutely don’t want to dig into the past now.

Ok, I’m almost ready for tomorrow's meeting. I waited for the song to complete and gushed out of washroom before the next one begins.


Hopeful Monday

Every Monday and Friday it feels like I’m living in a 25 hours per day planet. I don’t have to beat the traffic on 285 to save that one hour, its just that most of the people are working from home and the ride is smooth.

I reached home early, and as I untie my shoe lace, Katie asks about the groceries, argh!, I’m sure I missed checking the texts again. I rushed out of the house while saying “I’ll be back in 5” (fades away) with a shoe untied.


No Music

I always wanted to meet the boy who plays this amazing music as it felt like I was attending a free private concert. That is bad on my part, so I finally thought I could go to this house and say hi and tell him how much I enjoy his music.

The next day I took a right to the stairway instead of left (where we live), as I stepped closer to the door I began to listen a elderly guy shouting “Mark, you gotta take your life seriously….”. I think its his dad, and this isn’t a good sign for me to introduce myself. I quickly went to my washroom to listen to it clearly. I understood that Marks dad is upset about his behavior, not being good at his studies and he just playing his guitar all the time. I felt sad because its a lot of demotivation for Mark, who want to achieve something different .

It bought back my black days, I began to remember how my parents succeeded in stopping me from achieving something I have always loved. It is always hard on kids and it changes their life forever.

With a sad grin on my face, I headed to bed and hoping that nothing would change for him.


Back to gloomy days

The same kind of argument went on for a few more days. And now I hate the place which I used to love earlier. After few days, to my surprise, there were no arguments then I collected all my courage and went to speak with the Marks dad but something terrible happened.

As I knocked the door, the Marks dad opened the door, he is a tall, strong guy and its all dark in there. I hesitantly asked about Mark, but all he responded is a “no, he left” and shut the door on my face.

“What do you mean by left?” I screamed out silently, but again many thoughts rambled my mind and I headed back to my place. I couldn’t sleep that night and spent a long time staring at the empty ceiling, It was horrible.

Few days passed and slowly I got used to the same old routine. I felt Mark made an impact on my life, at least for a while, but its time to pull myself together and get back to my routine. I hope he stays safe and takes care of himself. Thats all I can hope for.


Amazement

After a month, I got an email from my manager to meet him. I was being promoted to Sales Manager of Atlanta Division. I felt like a ray of light burst in my gloomy life. I was very glad and Alan has invited me for a drink after office. I seldom participate in such after office parties but this time I cannot ignore but accept as I am the star of this party.

When I broke the news at home Katie is more than happy and I proposed to visit Panama City on Friday to celebrate the good news, the Kids and Fred are all excited for the beach.


Happy Weekend

We started early on Friday after office, we headed straight to Rosemary beach cottage which is close to the Panama beach and it was recommended by a colleague of mine, who’s a big time traveler.

Saturday was all hectic, we visited few must-watch places like Gulf world marine park, Man in the sea museum, and obviously the beach. I should say we had a perfect family time and I don’t remember the last time we spent such lovely time together.

We reached home at 7:30 ish in the evening, we are all dead tired from the whole day of travelling and visiting places and it made the kids hit the bed sooner than the usual.

Out of the blue I got this unusual idea, to ask Katie for a walk. She was surprised that I asked her out after many years and it made her blush a little I can see her cheeks turn pink. We haven't spent such time, just the two of us, since we had our first child, but tonight I want to spend some time.

We took the East County road close to our motel and started to talk about how close we were and the lovely times we used to spend. After we walked for a while, some music caught my attention I tried to get back to the conversation but I saw that we are walking towards it, slowly all the other sounds are muted and all I can hear is that music, it felt so familiar. I held Katies hand and crossed the road towards the pub. As I go closer to the door and let my self into the pub, I was singing the song, I realized that it is the song that Mark used to sing and indeed I realized it was Mark who is singing on stage and the audience are loving it. The moment froze until Katie pulled me.

I stayed there until the songs end and took Katie outside the pub to resume that walk we were doing. She asked me “What happened?”, but I didn’t want to tell her anything so I said “It’s nothing, the pubs too busy for us”. We walked away from the pub.

As we were walking there were many thoughts in my mind. When you want to do something you got to give it a big try, life is going to test your love towards the thing you are doing and that is when you have to hold it tight and say “I live for my passion” and nothing else. This kid has taken that risk and now he is rocking it.

I felt very happy for him that he’s doing what he loved and he is successful. As I walked down the road, I felt proud and that moment everything changed.

Thin walls, they change lives for sure.


If you’ve reached this, you’ve made it!! Have a great day!

Prady | @pradyumna_d | “File Your Cryptocurrency Taxes Using BearTax!”

Prady Doddala

Written by

Programming is an art, like music and painting.

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