The review for a story "Time should never be wasted" by @giantbear from @mgaft1

This is quite an interesting story. At a first look, this is a simple narrative, which condemns parental indifference and urges parents to be more responsive and spend quality time with their children. The author presents this moralizing concept in a form of an imaginary meeting of the protagonist with his father in the middle of the stormy night inside of the car.

However, this is only the sugar-coated surface. The author hid the real meaning deep under the hood and I will try to uncover it in this review.

Notice, the presence of the father inside the car is purely imaginary. Here we cannot even suggest an astral projection. One cannot teach old dog new tricks. If the protagonist’s father was not talkative and emotionally unavailable all his life, why would his behavior change during the astral session? Whet the protagonist witnessed freezing in the car was the pigment of his imagination. The words that came out of the imaginary father’s mouth were the words that the son would want to hear from him. They seemingly go along with the intended moral of the story.

Yet there is one important detail in the narrative where the author specifically pointing the reader out that this interpretation of the story is not he intended. He does it by introducing a completely impossible detail that even in the mind of the author seems far-fetched. “…and miraculously the car started and he could turn down the window…”

In another word, the author had to supplicate to a miracle in order to make the scene in the story at least somewhat believable.

Still, if the author’s intention for moral of the story followed by an impossible situation, what was the real meaning of the story?

Notice that in the story the protagonist pays much attention to himself: his strangled and offended feelings, his plans and his work. However, while a reader finds out quite bit about the protagonist, the author presents very limited information about his father. We don’t even know what was the job that his father was so adamant to be at, instead of spending quality time with his son. Could it be that his job was to help many other people or even his country? We don’t know.

What we can extract from the story is that he was a single father who didn’t marry again. Why? Could it be because he was afraid that another woman would not be able to substitute his son his mother? We also know that the father didn’t spend his times in bars, with prostitutes, drinking, and had any other bad habits. Why? Because if he would the protagonist would have surely noticed it and those bad habits would give the protagonist an additional reason to feel sorry for himself.

He had to work very hard to provide for his son’s need and to make sure he will be able to go to a good college and gain an excellent education, allowing him to live comfortably and become a valued and respected member of society. Could it be that his job wasn’t very well paid and that was the reason why he worked on the weekend – because he didn’t want his son to have everything that rich kids would have?

Is this what indifference sounds like? Not to me. To me this spells love. Only not the saliva sentimental love, but a love of a real man. Was he so indifferent that he didn’t want to visit his son’s soccer games and school plays? I don’t think so. In fact, I think he was depriving himself of this enjoyment because he felt he didn’t earn enough for his son, he was afraid for his future.

The story’s title is “Time should not be wasted” I think it is a good title. Only I don’t think the author meant it as “the father should not have wasted, spending all the time at work, instead of spending it with his kid.” The real meaning of the title is related to the protagonist wasting his time complaining and bemoaning his “hard” childhood.

The author showed the protagonist as callous, insensitive and self-absorbed; someone who, even in the moment of his father departure from this life, couldn’t appreciate his dad’s life-long sacrifice and was only thinking about himself.

I think this is the real point of this story.

Respectfully, @mgaft1.