"So, what do sharks like for breakfast?"

All day I have experienced disappointment after disappointment. Like the cars of a freight train, they followed one after the other, stopping for none, until finally striking me dead on the tracks. Expressionless, she looks up at me with those big, awe-inspiring, fear-striking, emerald eyes and asks me, “Fredrick, why did you come here today?” As I stand, paralyzed and staring straight into the green headlights of the oncoming disaster, I come to a simple conclusion — this day has been simply a train wreck.
The normal morning that brought the chaos seemed like an eternity ago. I had just “woken” up (really I had been lying in bed for about an hour without realizing I wasn’t actually asleep) and began to dress for the day. A Deathcab tee-shirt, blue jeans older than Easter Island, and a pair of lightweight work boots and I’m as ready as I’d ever be. As I trudge through the hallway towards the kitchen, something jumps me suddenly from behind. I let out a brief, confused noise halfway between a shout and a question before my little brother yells, “SHARK ATTACK!”
“Oh, good God,” I whisper, a parental compassion attempting to break through my grogginess. “Faceache, what’d I tell you about imitating things you see on T.V.? The people on Shark Week are not people, they are sharks.”
“Why can’t I be a shark?” he askes as I force him gently off my back.
“Because you’re already a person. If it were that easy, I’d be jackrabbit or something by now.”
“Why a jackrabbit? Sharks are cooler.”
“Yeah, but sharks hafta stay in the water and jackrabbits run fast.” The faster you run, the quicker you get anywhere but Kansas. Bored with our current topic, I lean down and ask Ethan, “So, what do sharks like to eat for breakfast, Faceache?”
“Waffles!” he declares, zooming past me and into the kitchen.
“Ah, waffles,” I mutter as I trail behind him. “What a surprise… again.”
After sending Ethan out to find Dad in the fields, I begin to cook the waffles. After pouring the first into the iron, a different hunger compels me to pick up yesterday’s paper; a hunger for something new.
My fingers immediately flip to the entertainment section out of habit, and I skim the local showings for the The Fray concert I’d been looking forward to. Just to the right of the listing are the words, “SOLD OUT.”
A surge of panic sweeps over me, and I dash for my wallet on my dresser. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty… I had finally saved up enough!
And so, the train departs.