This is it.

Time flies, and so does life. So long gone are the days we used to sit on sands at nights gazing at the starry sky and wondering what the future holds.

We had big dreams then, dreams of wealth and fame, of sitting on expensive couches, sipping fine wines from fine ass glasses and puffing cigar smokes into air with our legs crossed as the perfect Gentlemen. We thought if we dreamt hard enough then life will make us smile and we'll join the league of the affluent, drive around the city all night attending balls, making acquaintances with the popular and flirting with beautiful ladies.

We saw luxury homes on the old granny TVs we had then, the TV you had to hit really hard to get going. And we saw big white cars passing the major streets but never once in our hoods, and we used to wonder what kind of kids were driven in them.

And we wished our folks weren't so lazy. We wished they were rich enough to buy us new clothes every month, and good toy cars with batteries and remotes, not the type the good old carpenter made with long woods that had bad paintings and just one wheel. We couldn't just understand why dad will not send us to colleges in London or maybe United states, so we hated him. Why won't mum just be like that fancy woman with big hairs and rather high shoulder pads with excess make up on her face who drove the fat bully to school every morning?
So we disrespected mum.

They were lazy, lazy mum and dad, we promised our unborn babies we'd never park at the same lot they did, we swore we'll own the world, and buy all the luxuries our old poor and lazy folks couldn't.

We dreamt, we hoped, and we had faith, just like the old reverend who always slept during hymns preached.

And time flew, so did life.

Here we are now, with muscles and beards. Dad's very old, mum's got many wrinkles. We're through with school, we have girlfriends now but they are not the beauty queens we had in mind. We have jobs too, blue collar, average pay, so no balls and late night parties, no expensive shoes and fine wines. We do drink, but they are beers from mugs in the over crowded bar just down the hood.

Those big white cars still pass the major streets, new better ones, but it's not our kids inside. Bigger mansions seemed to emerge overnight, but we're not the ones who live in them. In fact, we live in the low earners part of town and we share the toilets, four of us.

We work hard, we pray every morning, we do all we were told will make us great, but it seems we're headed right where dad parked with full speed.

It is the tomorrow we always talked about as kids, this is that day we said we'll rule our worlds as we stormed out on our underachieving fathers and mums. We are here now, the adults, the stage is ours. We bragged we'll do better. But we're quieter now, lessons learnt. We don't see those old poor drunks in our streets as the lazy fools we called them, we actually call them Papas now. We don't think dad is that old man who wasted his youth and didn't do much to give us castles and jets.

Now we see life, and it aint no child's play.

We're spotting fresh grey hairs, our kids are playing with badly made plastic cars but too scared to speak up. The girl we got pregnant is sitting in the corner silently cursing us. We know what's on their minds, it hurts us too but we can't fight it, our strength is finally giving in and one more time we look up to the skies, this time not to dream but to ask questions. How did we go wrong? Where did we miss it?

This is it, welcome to today.