Five Minutes

         The darkest depths of space define my dominion over them.  To them I am a god.  To them I am invincible.  To them I am untrickable.  To them I am unstoppable.  To them my name is inspiration.  But I am just a man.  I am no smarter than another.  I am no stronger than another.  I have no power in my name or in my being.  But, I am the pilot, and in my hands, my fighter becomes the ultimate weapon of unrivaled undoing.  Molecular mayhem is my masterpiece and my pride.  There is no one that can defeat or destroy me; yet here I am: adrift and alone.  I have just five minutes of air left.
           Only now do I realize how short five minutes really is, but there are times and places where five minutes is an eternity.  Just ask my four year old son.  I remember one time a few weeks ago, when I walked into the kitchen and found him with his hand in the cookie jar.  His eyes got big when he saw me and his hand quickly darted out of the jar and behind his back.  Not even one minute before my wife had told him, “Stay out of the cookies Johny.”
         So I asked him, “What’s that behind your back?”
         “Nothing,” he replied quickly.
         “It’s not a cookie?”
         “No.”
         “What is it then?” I asked him.  I remember being very curious what his answer might be.
         “Nothing.”
         “Then why is your hand behind your back?”
         He didn’t answer for a few seconds, but then answered, “It just likes to.”  He seemed very pleased with himself.
         “Your hand just likes to hide behind your back?” I asked.
         “Uh huh.”
         “When there is nothing in it?”
         “Uh huh.”
         “Really?”
         “Uh huh.”
         “Are you telling me the truth Johny?” I asked.
         His eyes darted to the side and then back to mine as he answered, “Yes.”
         “Johny, show me what’s in your hand,” I instructed him.
         His hand slowly crept out from behind his back, as if sheepish about its crime.  As he brought it forward it rubbed against the side of his shirt, leaving a chocolate smear in its wake.  Once unhidden I could clearly see the chocolate chip cookie in his fingers.  “Johny, you told me there was no cookie in that hand,” I said sternly.
         I could tell he was furiously trying to find words that get him off the hook.  After a few seconds he said, “I don’t know how it got there.”
         “You don’t know how it got into your hand?”
         “No,” he assured me, shaking his head from side to side to emphasize it.
         I just said one word, “Johny.”
         He squirmed there for a few moments and then admitted, “I took it.”  His head hung low and the cookie tumbled from his fingers, crashing to the countertop, crumbs breaking off and scattering across the surface.
         “Time out, five minutes.”
         He trudged off to the “time out stool”, heart heavy with his shame.  At first he sat there penitent, but serious as he was at the start, within a minute he was fidgeting, and by the end of the third minute he asked, “Has it been five minutes yet?”
         “Only three Johny, and no talking or it will start over.”  I could see that the threat of it starting over was quite worrisome to him, and for perhaps another minute he sat there like he was supposed to, but well before the end of the five minutes he asked the same question again. 
         “No talking,” I said.  A five minute time out is an eternity.
         Five minutes to live isn’t.  Five minutes is barely enough time to even try to decide what to do with it.  One thing is certain: I will not spend my final moments in time out.  I am not going to sit here and do nothing, but what can I do?  Once the pinnacle of mankind’s technology, my ship is now nothing but a drifting, scorch-marked scrapheap, and there really isn’t anything I can do about it.
         The battle had been fierce, ships being blown to bits all around and all about.  I flew fast and fierce; I had never flown so well before, but it wasn’t enough.  We were winning, but in mere moments everything evaporated.  I have no idea how they did it, but they induced our sun to explode like some common firecracker.  A burning blast obliterated billions of people on the planets in the system, leaving them just as useless as it left my fighter.
         I suppose it is a miracle that I even survived the blast to have these five minutes, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t see it that way.  I hate being helpless far more than I hate death.  The only fear that death holds for me is that I will never see my son or my wife, ever again.  Fate is cruel to rip me from them.  She would laugh at me for how I waste these final moments longing for what I can’t have.  I remember the night we were married.
         I was eager and impatient throughout the reception.  I think it’s understandable why, but my brand new wife told me, “You’ve waited for me this long, a few more hours and I’ll finally get what I’ve been waiting for.”  That left me a little shocked; she just smiled wickedly and practically pranced away to mingle with our guests, laughing like it was going out of style, and purposefully swaying her hips a little as she walked away.  She didn’t even need to look over her shoulder to know the effect it was having on me.
         She always knew how to live a moment.  She would tell me, “Every breath is unique, savor it.”  It never made any sense to me until now, until I have so few left.  She can always sit there and soak in the joy of any moment; she is that amazing, but I have always struggled to follow that lead.  Now, in my final moments, I realize how precious every moment, every breath, is.  I may not have many left, but I’ll spend my final breaths remembering cookie jars and wedding nights.  That doesn’t seem such a terrible five minutes.

1051 words