"Your performance evaluation was sub par this decade." I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, "Well, I've been busy kinda doing my own thing." "A whole decade." "Well, yeah, I mean... you know, there's been a lot of stuff." "Stuff..." "Well, uh, yeah, have you guys ever watched Game of Thrones? It's pretty amazing." "And what else, if we may ask, have you done this decade, Jack?" I couldn't even remember my last evaluation. Today was my 20th birthday so that puts my last evaluation at ten years old. Ten years old. But I'm pretty sure it went better than this one is going. I mean what did this panel know anyway? Bunch of stuffy old suits with crappy ties and comb-overs. Did they go through these evaluations too? How interesting could they be? "Well, uh, you know... my own thing." "As you've said." Definitely not going as well as it did 10 years ago. "Okay Jack, well our initial evaluation, at least, isn't final. What we're really after is personal development, so we're going to dig deeper into some aspects of your life before we make up our minds." I nodded. Stuffy-old-tie-man looked over to other-stuffy-old-tie-man, who started reading off a small piece of paper, "Physical achievements?" "Well, uh, for a couple months I did crunches twice a week. And I take the stairs at work every time I remember to." "In your previous decade, you'd learned to crawl, walk, run, swim, and exercised a few hours every day..." He reached for the red rubber stamp on the table, and with a SLAM marked the paper. "Interpersonal relationships?" "I have an old OKCupid account. I use Tinder a lot more often these days, I'm kind of messaging this one girl on and off." "Last decade you spent every day bonding with your family and tried to make friends with every person you met on the street." He reached for the red stamp. SLAM. "Artistic development?" "I watch a lot of TV." I saw him go for the red stamp again, "WAIT, wait, and I also use Photoshop. I made this one picture of a shiba inu riding a scooter. I called it Very Vespa." "In your last decade you learned what colors were, and developed immediately to experimental painting techniques using your fingers. You made your mother gifts that brought tears to her eyes." SLAM. The list seemed to go on forever. Moral growth. Financial progress. Professional advancement. And each one of my answers was promptly followed with the damning SLAM, that stamp dropping like a guillotine. "Well Jack, that's it." It couldn't be. I hadn't made one good impression this whole time. The stuffy old men passed my paper around, shook their heads, muttered in each other's ears. "Jack... this a little disappointing." "NO progress, if anything, it's all been steps back" "Very very disappointing Jack." "Very." My eyes darted between all of them. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to plead my case. These old men had turned into the most frightening people I'd ever seen. "You don't even live up to your ten year old self, Jack." Maybe I had grown complacent. I enjoyed it. I liked watching my shows, dicking around on the internet, chatting with strangers. I mean... yeah when you broke it down into a cold list like that, it kind of sounds like I'm not doing so well, but I enjoyed it. Isn't that what mattered? "This is just... pathetic Jack. We've seen some sad cases, but never one like this. Not one sign of development. Not. One." I was almost in tears at this point. That was it. I'd screwed it all up. I could see them all whispering to each other, no doubt going over what execution method to use. I was hogging the resources. I was a dead end holding everyone back. Then the whispers stopped. All eyes fell back on me. My eyes fell to the table. "Jack... we have to let you go." "You're pathetic Jack. You live an empty life devoid of excitement, stimulation or passion. You live every single day like some sort of drone drifting from casual distraction to casual distraction." "We just... we can't kill you. You're too pathetic, Jack." and with that, he reached for the green stamp, held it over my paper for a moment that stretched on forever... SLAM. "The council is taking pity on you." "You get one chance. Just one." "See you in ten years." They slid my paper back to me. This had to be a mistake. I'm good to go? I can leave? I stared at the paper, green stamp and all, lying on the table in front of me. I snatched it up before it could be stolen away, and fled out of the office as if my life depended on it. Which, really, it did. Riding the bus home, I kept looking the report over. I really hadn't lived up to my potential had I? Once, I'd grabbed life by the horns just because I could, now talking to the cashier at the supermarket was a chore. Maybe this wasn't just about saving my life. Maybe I should turn things around because that's simply the best way to live life. That was it. That was absolutely it. And I had it right here, an objective peer evaluated report that showed me where my life had fallen short. A cheat sheet for how to improve myself. And I was going to improve myself. I was going to go home and turn my life around. I was going to go home, watch an episode of House of Cards, and turn my life around. I was going to go home, watch an episode of House of Cards, maybe order a pizza, and turn my life around.....
