same but different

J was a very ordinary man. 

in his physical attributes he met the standards set by his countrymen in practically every aspect. he was of medium height and build, hair of no particular colour but a flat shade of brown and had eyes that were, depending on the amount of light, either worn-out brown or a little bit grayish. his eyes were located on his plain face perhaps slightly more apart than what was considered pleasant to look at, but not so much so that it would have made his features particularly recognizable. he had the kind of face you forget once you are no longer looking at it; the face of the man in the bus next to you, or the janitor's, or perhaps of the insurance clerk on the other end of the telephone line you called because you try to find out why you were billed too much last month.

in terms of his his mental attributes he also fell into the area of average. he wasn't stupid but there were no hopes of  the career of a nuclear physicist or a brain surgeon; the latter mainly because his devotion and patience were of average level as well and could not therefore be stretched to endure the trials of studying into such a profession.  he wasn't particularly ill-tempered but lacked the gift of an unconstrained, overflowing good nature as well; most of the time his mindset was even as a train on its tracks and small was the number of things that had the capability to upset him. he had a few friends, none of them he would have probably given his life for but close enough to make him feel that he mattered and wasn't left out; and the occasional girlfriends that came and went assured him that he could, if he so wanted, even marry some day.

his days consisted of waking up, doing some light exercise to keep the years from sneaking up on him, going to work to an average office building on an average salary, occasionally lunching with few colleagues he was friendly with but not overly so, getting home from work either straight or stopping by at a bar to have a beer or two with his mates, cooking some dinner and then either watching the telly or reading some light literature -- he was not a friend of deep subjects -- before going to bed. he slept soundly and without dreams, and when the alarm woke him up in the morning he more often than not felt relatively rested. 

on the weekends and holidays he usually slept a little bit longer, ate a big breakfast while browsing the weekend paper and then ran some errands he hadn't had time for during the week. sometimes he took a walk, or went to see his mother who lived in a town two hours away, or went to the cinema if there was something of interest to see. in the evenings he always returned home like a ship that returns to port; and again he would eat, and watch some tv, and go to bed.

his average life flowed forward like this from day to day, calm and uninterrupted and practically as predictable as the rotation of the earth. of course there were the occasional mishaps -- once he got into a small car accident when the driver behind him didn't slow down in time in red lights but instead bumped into him; the incident left him with a sore neck for a week or two and the inconvenience of having to have to take a bus to work while his car was being repaired. once his wallet was stolen, and there was also the time when he got a severe food poisoning from the buffet of a renowned if somewhat outdated restaurant and had to be taken into the hospital for two days. the local newspaper even interviewed him due to this incident - it had been a very quiet news summer -- and as he had sat there in the hospital bed talking with the reporter who had had a bad skin and was barely out of college (summer intern, probably) it had briefly passed his mind that this was probably his 15 minutes of fame.

and in all his averageness he was quite content with his life. there was really nothing that he didn't have that he would have needed -- sure, there were some things he would have wanted that were out of his reach, like a convertible or a bigger flat closer to the center of the city -- but he understood that these were things that probably wouldn't give him any lasting increase in happiness, and therefore he never felt that he was deprived of anything in particular. he knew his current place in the world, more or less, and he knew that there were people smarter, better-looking, more rich, more successful than him; but this had never bothered him. because somewhere deep down inside, somewhere in the back of his head and in the bottom layer of his heart he knew that some day it would be his turn. 

he knew that in all his averageness he was, in fact, something quite extraordinary, something waiting to be discovered and granted with the recognition he duly deserved. he was so average that it was unique; and in a world full of people average but not average enough -- not as average as him, anyway -- surely this was something that separated him from the rest and would thus eventually be paid attention to.