The Change, Part I

I know that it struck me as strange the moment I first felt the change, a first inkling, it came to me way back when I was twenty-three, was my first summer out of school, I met with my friend Jo Dankool, he’d graduated two-years before, I barely saw him anymore. We met up for drinks one brisk night, the way he moved didn’t seem right, his energy seemed all but robbed, I asked and he said,”It’s the job. I like my work, please do not doubt, but just got my taxes figured out. I would be making eighty K, but feds take so damn much away. Annoyed to work sixty hours, do all that is in my power, only to lose a massive chunk, two years back who would’ve thunk, that I would look down on the poor and wonder if they could do more… For every one who really needs it seems there are another three who easily could be at work, I point it out, they call me jerk. to sit around while I toil really gets the blood to boil, why now has it become okay to live off hand-outs all your days?” I just let him rant and vent, these words couldn’t be what he meant. Then I got a job selling boats, and learned just why that way he spoke, when I sweated quotas every day to bring down my own fifty K. worked hard for it, but they’d declare that I was ‘rich,’ money to space, that I was just a greedy bloke not to give it to poor folks. So why work then? I wracked my brain, felt the first stirrings of the change.