FictionalAccount's Journal: Cry Me a River

Here.

Old Man Bradbury had been a fixture on the block for years. Every day he sat on his porch, rocking back in forth, idling smoking his pipe, and glaring at the world as it passed him by.

"So what?" he'd used to say when his neighbors would get a new car, "Is that going to get you anywhere any faster in this traffic?"

"So what?" he'd say when they put a man on the moon, "Am I going to live on the moon now? No? Then so what?"

New trends and fashions would pass him by, always receiving the two word response "So what?" There wasn't much that escaped his scoffing attitude, even his children.

"So what?" he said when presented with a flower from his daughter Noreen. "I can get those at the store, what, are you a florist now?"

"So what?" he told his son Billy as he brought home the second place trophy from little league, "someone else did a better job. Why even have a trophy for second?"

His work, his life, and his family dulled him. Nothing impressed him. The news was always the same, the new miracles of the modern age changing nothing other than how people waste their time. To Old Man Bradbury the world was a cold, static place, and if anything mattered to him it was making sure that everyone knew nothing did.

And so he lived on, rocking in place and watching the world from his porch, until one day the rocking stopped for good.

Billy called his sister that day: "He's gone Noreen. Doctor's say he went pretty quiet...but...he's gone. Dad's dead Noreen."

She sighed into the receiver, rolled her eyes back, and pushed a tear away:

"So what Billy....so what?"