Senses

Down the street walks a man named Raul. He goes to his bus stop, leaves, and then returns eight and a half hours later. Raul had finally come back from his eight hour job, which consist of answering phone calls from angry customers and running various errands. In one arm he carries a large bag of groceries that he picked up at the grocery store across from his work place. While at the grocery store he quickly picked up some lettuce, broccoli, and some red meats; a diet he had been following ever since he was a teenage boy. He enters his home and cooks his meats and vegetables without caring much to season the meat or to make it a certain way to his personal preferences. It seemed strange to the few guest he had over, but he didn’t care. It was something he pushed to the side in his mind and didn’t give much attention unless he was asked about it. Once again he finishes his tasteless and healthy meal and leaves some of his left over vegetables in his refrigerator. It’s been a long day and he’s finally gone to bed.  

He hadn’t had any critical medical condition and there was nothing that held him back from living a normal life just like any 23 year old man.  There were two things that did hold him back from enjoying the simple things in life. Raul had not been born with a sense of smell or the ability to taste food. His lack of senses was something that Raul had learned to ignore over the years and didn’t really even bother to mention whenever he met someone. His taste and his smell were obsolete and that was the exact way he treated their absence. It did become kind of a joke in his own mind whenever some of his friends asked him if he liked a certain restaurant or if he’d like his steak medium rare. He’d chuckle at the obsession that people had over such things. They all seemed so simple and unnecessary to a person. Almost as if it was something a child would obsess over and then leave alone after everyone else “got over it”.  Raul had lived in a world of so many flavors and scents. A world where stores and restaurants were made to satisfy people with desires to smell a certain way or to taste an “extraordinary” scent. It was all tempting at some point but he’d learned to live with it.

Today was a new day for Raul. It was October thirteenth and he wasn’t headed to his job. No, he was headed to the bus stop with a fresh resume that he had typed up the night before. He was finally applying for a new job that had opened up at a local newspaper as an editor and he wanted to impress. Raul had spent the last preparing and looking through various stores around the city to find the perfect suit. He arrived a block away from the building wearing a slim charcoal colored suit and a old pair of shoes that he shined perfectly the night before. Raul ran to th-e building, so he wouldn’t be late and finally arrived. It was peculiar building and needed some renovating but in a day where web pages offer more than actual newspapers could; money was probably a bigger issue. The interview was given by a fidgety man, that couldn’t of have been any more meek. He was tall, slender, and he didn’t seem to know how to conduct a basic interview. His questions were all personal and he took little interest in Raul. It was a strange interview; the kind of interview that would make you doubt that you even got the job but also made you question you potential.