Why Me

“Lenny, if you’ll quit blubbering, I’ll tell you why.

“It was late, so you said. You said you were tired, that work that day had really been horrendous, so that put you under the gun, or pressure, if you prefer.

“At the end of the day, in this case night, you get in your car to drive home, but your body and your head is exhausted. All you could think of was finally being free of a dismal day.

“You said you felt tired, stressed, and wanted to unwind. This can cause people to not pay attention so much when driving, and that’s what happened with you.

“You said you thought you hit an animal, but dude, you never stopped to check. You just kept driving as if the ‘animal’, you thought you hit, didn’t matter. In this case, it mattered a great deal.

“If you had stopped, got out of the car, and looked, you might not be sitting here in prison as my cell mate. You might have been home on probation, maybe. Can’t swear to that. But not checking and continuing to drive home just didn’t look good for you.

“Seven years is a long time, but it’ll fly by.

“But, you want to know something? That why me, you are always crying about? If it weren’t you, it would have been someone else. You were just unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So get over it and just do your time.

“You don’t hear me whining about my sentence do you? And why is that? Because the bottom line is, you do the crime, get caught; you do the time, There isn’t any escaping that. Hell, man, I thought I was doing the right thing when this dude starting messing with some woman in a bar. She didn’t want to be bothered, so I walk up and tell him to back off. He gets angry with me, we fight, and I hit him one too many times. He dies. I get ten years. Any justice in that? Hell no, but it is what it is and there’s no going back to change what happened.

“Now just shut up about it, and go to sleep.”