Sauntering to the edge of the dock to catch a glimpse of the ferry fleeting toward the horizon and disappear into the fading sun. Defeated, the man took a seat and sighed deeply prior to removing his shoes. Clumsily he shook the shoe over the calm tide to remove the accrued debris. Next he fixed his attention to his socks, dingy white with a ring of dust around the ankle and gray accents on the across heel and toes. Delicately removing his foot from the socks as if he were fitting a sweater on an infant, he rolled the spent socks into a disc and pondered their significance. He shook his head in dismay to the non-existent observers as he flung the sock toward the ocean. Watching it fall before him he muttered, "This is all my fault." A small tear began forming in the crook of his left eye as he gasped in and effort to choke it, but relented to the weight of his errors and confessed aloud, in near hysterics: "This is what happens when you take the scenic route!"

Trying to gain some composure he plunged his hands into the gnarled and cracked beams which made up the dock, pushing himself onto his feet in a kneeling-half-stance he raised his head to try and hide his pain and walked back the way from which he came barefoot and into the dusk of an evening with no regard for how he admittedly "wasted his life."