It's a great title for a short story! I thought it was brilliant when I read it and right away wanted to write about this Peter America and his adventures in the American vacuum.

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Peter America Has the Attention Span of a Fly

By Reg

(Title by Randym)

It was not always this way. Eight years of public schooling, four in a private high school, followed by college and a MBA at the University of Rochester in New York, there was a time when Peter America seemed capable of focus and perhaps living up to the promise of his name. A name that seemed to fascinate people wherever he went raising the question "Who is this Peter America?" and drawing them into his circle. It was a question Peter once felt he could answer but now he had no idea. Two failed businesses that included a pair of bankruptcy filings, three failed marriages, and four children that would not speak to him had left him with far more questions than answers. Now living alone in a condominium he had paid too much for his main company these days was his late forties morass.

In a way he felt that he had lived the life of three men but this had been no benefit to him at all. In fact Peter felt he would have been better off having had three deaths that would have provided some closure to each of these lives. As things stood now each one of these men he had been in each of these lives seemed to have to reappear at the adjudicated moment to again answer for the havoc he had precipitated or at least had been party to.

This now constant juggling of three lives, three identities, and the multiple implications of each had left Mr. America with, what seemed to those who knew him in his present state, the attention span of a fly. Peter had become used to hearing this, or at least used to being able to ignore it, but somewhere in the first fifty or so times it was said he had developed a response to it.

“Are you listening, Peter?”

“Are you with us, Peter?”

“Anybody home in there?”

“Peter? Peter? Peter?”

The query always came first followed by some version of “You seem to have the attention span of a fly.” which may be delivered in anger, concern, confusion, or with a laugh depending upon the accuser or set of circumstances.

“A fly’s lifespan is mercifully short and the fly is actually attracted to and enjoys the odor and consumption of shit.” he would say, at first with venom or spite or a laugh depending upon the accuser or circumstance, but these days he found himself delivering the line with no emotion or irony at all. It would emerge from him in empty monotone, white flag waving to acknowledge his defeat to this simple fact. Yes, it was true and he knew it. Peter America had the attention span of a fly and it seemed shared that fly’s attraction to shit.