text: Jack was a man of no particular talents. His appearance was inconspicuous. At second glance, some women said that he had a handsome face but they mostly did not notice him at first glance. He was of average height, slim, not athletic. Brown hair, a muddy color. His teeth were neat, like an orderly front yard because he took brushing and flossing very seriously. In winter, his hands became dry and inflamed and he never used lotion so they always hurt. He had a simple head but the wisdom to know that. He had made up his mind about the world in relatively shallow but sufficient fashion. His position was clear to him and, should not occur some drastic change, would be so for the rest of his days. He had missed the few big chances he had had but was just fine with it. He worked in an office in a minor administrative position and brought home a salary that was right in line with any statistic about the lower middle class. He enjoyed watching TV. He knew that it wasn’t an enriching activity but what, he asked himself, did he need to be enriched for when work was done? He knew that he would not contribute anything particular, anything striking to the world and had stopped deceiving himself about that truth long ago. He was born to be a gearwheel, and so he would not hurt anybody, would not disrupt anything, do his job and remain quiet. One day he would find a woman that was as attractive as him, probably occupying a minor administrative position and he would marry her and have some children, and all, if nothing out of the ordinary happened, would be born to be gearwheels, neat and nondescript, turning until the day they stopped. The world would be spinning the same with the genepool of Jack Edgar roaming its surface, or not. All of these things would sound terribly depressing to the dreamer out there, might his dreams be an end in themselves, who knows, because the world would have you believe that being a dreamer is essential. Jack increasingly settled, increasingly became comfortable, more and more liked what he saw in the mirror. He got up and smiled in the morning. Why shouldn’t he consider himself handsome? There was the broad forehead and the prominent cheekbones. There was the stubby little nose and the thin lips but the shadow of a thick beard could conceal these pretty well. He thought back and recalled quite a number of compliments he had gotten throughout life. He decided to make it a ritual to recall them every morning to feel better. Why shouldn’t he be fine with his job? Most of his colleagues were nice and with some of them, upon meeting them in the office, he enjoyed a pleasant little chat. And as time went on, he himself, and other people, discovered the humorous side of him and the ability to make those around him laugh in some of the right moments. When he came home, he usually switched on the TV and let anything that it showed pour out of it, while leisurely letting his attention wander through the talk shows and movies and sitcoms. Then, one night, he never knew what had driven him to do it, he opened an old box with belongings of his late grandfather and examined the contents. Next to a bunch of photos, the pipe, the old man’s favorite hat, there were some dusty books. He investigated them, not in the least eager, but remembered some of the names from school and then found out that they all were established classics in english literature. Half ironic, he took one of them ‘The picture of Dorian Grey’, opened it and in homage to Frank Edgar, took the pipe between his teeth and half died of a coughing fit, for he had inhaled some particle of old tobacco. Recovered, he began to read and fought, like every person unaccustomed with reading, through the first strong onset of boredom but on page twenty was gripped by zeal. He finished the book in three days, picked up the next, finished that and became somewhat of an avid reader and discovered the meaning and the value of an enriching activity, which he had, so long, dismissed. He never touched the pipe again. He eventually even joined a book club, where some locals got together and read and discussed what they had read and Jack made friends there. Fine people, philanthropists, working in soup kitchens and buying christmas gifts for the poor children. There was a world beyond, Jack realized. Your own personal horizon, he understood, wasn’t the end, and for the first time he grasped what it meant to broaden it. He lay wondering oftentimes now, when in bed at night, about that future wife and the kids that would somewhere down the line, enrich his life like books had done and the people in the book club. And maybe, he liked to think, one of them would do something special. He would teach them reading right away, so much was certain.