It was early on in my adolescent life that I discovered my hatred for people my own age. At 4 years old I knew that no one under the age of 30 had anything of value worth saying. Like many still entrapped in their single-digit years my mother was my best friend; my Aunt Starr coming in a very close second. These two never failed to make me laugh. They could fill an entire afternoon talking about life, something that I at 4 years old had little experience of. Unlike my peers that waxed on about Barbie and the latest episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, my mother and aunt had real stories to tell me.
Both women had been divorced by the age of 33. One saddled with 2 children and an ex-husband that rarely even showed up on birthdays. The other remarried to a kind man, with no kids of her own and a free-spirited attitude toward life. Both worked hard. Both suffered at the hands of their exes. Both came out the other end to continue on. I was fascinated with the idea of two people’s lives being so similar, yet their paths diverging in such a way it was unmistakable to see the differences among the two. Where my mother struggled to keep my sister and me in line and fed, my aunt just had to worry about her husband bringing home yet another assortment of garage sale finds. If there was one worry in her life it was my Uncle James’ obsession with getting a good deal. If there was a yard sale or flea market on the way home from work you could bet money on James coming home with a size 13 pair of sneakers no one needed or could even fit in. My mother had to call my father to remind him Christmas was coming up. Starr had to call my uncle to remind him he was due home five hours ago and to, “Leave the damned microwave cart at the garage sale. We have a built in unit for Christ’s sake! No, we won’t ever need it and neither will anyone else!”
Years later my sister would tease me for talking to strangers when my family would go out to eat. By the age of 6 I had realized that not only did my mother and aunt have fascinating stories, other older people would as well. When my family would go out for dinner, to a movie, to watch fireworks, I could be found sitting beside the oldest person in the vicinity enraptured by their tales. Often times they would talk about how adorable I was, and such a nice young girl. A child being interested in what an old person has to say is like crack to the geriatric. So used to being ignored by anyone with a pulse still above 40 beats per minute, having a little girl willingly walk up and start talking to them was a true treat. I enjoyed the smiles they’d get as I walked up, and to say all the accolades to my looks didn’t feed my ego would be a lie, but what I really wanted was to hear about their lives. Did you fight in a war? How did your knee go out? What is a colostomy bag, and why do you need it?
By the time I was a teenager I started to veer away from these hangouts with random old people. My friend had been the victim of a sexual predator by my first year of high school, and though I wholly blamed her for agreeing to go to a movie with somebody she met in a chat room I couldn’t help my sudden apprehension of talking to strangers, especially old men. They no longer just held a plethora of knowledge, they were also sexual beings. At some point in time Mr. Jenkins from down the road had slept with someone. With the help of Viagra perhaps he still did. I saw the way he looked at the old widow Mrs. Anderson. Gone were my dinnertime hangouts with the senior citizens at Denny’s early bird special. Now I could only talk to people I knew, which in turn greatly reduced my friend base.
This was how I met my mother’s boss, Mr. Patel. He was a nice old Indian man that seemed to take a shine to me right away. He was Hindu, something that I had never come across before and was fascinated by. This was right around the time Madonna decided to partake in eastern religions and Gwen Stefani started wearing bindis in her music videos. Here I was with an actual practicing Hindu that not only liked me but wanted to teach me everything he knew. It was like the heavens had opened up to say, “Nina, here is everything you could possibly ever want out of life.”
Mr. Patel started telling me about his life in India before he moved to America in the 70’s. I would come into work with my mother and spend the rest of the afternoon learning about how Mr. Patel had built his life up from scratch when he migrated. When my school had us pick a country to do a group project on I immediately chose India and begged my group to let me take over the religion portion of the paper. For a week I interrogated Mr. Patel about his religion, and though I was slightly off put by his pineapple ritual for opening a new business I started to see why all of America’s celebrities were jumping on the bandwagon. One day at the end of our interview session Mr. Patel told me I was an old soul; he could see it in my eyes. I had no idea what this meant, but I liked the sound of it. For years I had spent my life longing for the day when I would belong in a room of senior citizens, when I would be able to look at a young person and tell them, “Well, back in my day…” Now, here I was an old soul. I might look young, but inside I was already 85 years old.
I started to fantasize about what my inner 85 year old would do were I to let her out. Once someone get’s old their body starts to go and the mind is soon to follow. The trick is to find that sweet spot when you still have all of your faculties but look like you might be old enough to need an oxygen tank. My inner 85 year old was still a fully functioning human being, but she knew how to get her way. She’d walk into a store, grab a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter and walk out without paying while smiling and waving to the store clerk. If anyone dared come after her for shoplifting she’d simply claim senility. She’d sit on her porch in the afternoons yelling at kids that dared walk on the sidewalk in front of her house. She’d tell her grand kids about her time spent traveling the railways with the hobos and the time she killed a man in Vancouver for looking at her funny. She’d only use a walker when family was over causing them to tell her to take a load off, they’d do those dishes that had been piling up for a week. It was going to be a sweet life, but for now I was only 14; I had to wait it out.
A year ago I turned 25 and had a veritable mental breakdown. All those years spent in the midst of the old had done nothing to quell my fear of death. Though I couldn’t wait to be a cute old lady like my grandmother, I had no desire to ever be so close to death. Turning 25 was the first milestone in my inevitable voyage to the great blackout. My inner 85 year old laughed at my realization, shaking her head that I had to have known this was coming. I was still alienated among people my own age, but the elderly I looked up to were a reminder of where I was headed. Secretly I had always assumed I’d die in a terrible accident before I was 30. Being old and going out in a slow and drawn out fashion had never occurred to me. I had always just seen the elderly as cuter, shorter versions of regular people. Not only was Mr. Jenkins schtupping Mrs. Anderson, he was also going to die.
In the fall of last year my mother called to tell me that Mr. Patel had passed away. He had a heart attack and was doing fine, but in the middle of the night something had gone wrong and he died. By this time my mother was no longer working for Mr. Patel, and I honestly hadn’t thought of him for years. Hearing about his death was depressing, but did it really affect me? Mr. Patel had once told me I had an old soul and that I had lived many lives before. If he was right was he really dead or just moved on into another form? According to my grandmother he’s probably in Hell since he wasn’t a Christian. In my own non-religious belief he’s just a body being reabsorbed by the earth that once created him- though I’m not really sure how that works with cremation. I like his idea better.
*****
Every morning on my way into work I pass this little old man on Lakemont who waves at every car that passes by him. Some people smile uncontrollably at seeing a baby being bounced on its father’s knee. Me, I smile whenever I see an old person happy. Yeah I fear death and now as a result I also fear getting old, but I have had a love of the elderly since I was 4 and it’s hard to break a habit you’ve had for that long. Every morning when I pass George, that’s what I’ve named him in my head, and he waves at me I instantly feel better. George can barely walk and has a hunch so bad it looks like he is constantly searching the ground for pennies, but still he goes for a walk every day to wave at all his friends.
On mornings where George is missing I spend my day worried that something has happened to him. Did he oversleep? Or maybe he just got up early; my grandmother has a habit of waking at 4am some days. If there were ever to be multiple days in a row with no George to greet me on my drive into work I’d probably pull over and knock on every door down Lakemont until I found his house to make sure he was alive and ok. “Please,” I’d say, “it’s the least I can do.” He’d smile and thank me for checking up on him. Later I’d come home to find a fruit basket with a note from George thanking me again for being so kind to a stranger. I'd quickly wonder how he got my address for the delivery before giving in to the chocolate covered strawberries.
This morning turning onto Lakemont I could see the familiar figure of George walking down the sidewalk. Blue and silver striped track suit? Check! Matching baseball cap? Check! Hunched over physique of Quasimodo? Double check! Pulling up the anticipation was eating away at me; my hand already at half mast waiting for George to look my way. A few feet away and my stomach was in butterflies, a smile already gracing my lips. And then he did it, he turned around. He turned his back to me! How can he wave and smile with his back turned to me? And that was it, wasn’t it? He wasn’t going to wave to me. I was snubbed. My geriatric friend denied me a simple gesture of the hand. I wanted to scream out the window, “I’m one of you! I’m an old soul God damn it! You can see it in my eyes!” Instead I kept driving, I lowered my extended arm and I glowered. I may never get that fruit basket from George, but you know what? When he finds himself “fallen and can’t get up” I’ll be the last person to show up frantic on his doorstep to make sure he’s ok. I may love cute old people, but I no longer love you George! Unless of course you wave to me again tomorrow, then we’re cool.
Both women had been divorced by the age of 33. One saddled with 2 children and an ex-husband that rarely even showed up on birthdays. The other remarried to a kind man, with no kids of her own and a free-spirited attitude toward life. Both worked hard. Both suffered at the hands of their exes. Both came out the other end to continue on. I was fascinated with the idea of two people’s lives being so similar, yet their paths diverging in such a way it was unmistakable to see the differences among the two. Where my mother struggled to keep my sister and me in line and fed, my aunt just had to worry about her husband bringing home yet another assortment of garage sale finds. If there was one worry in her life it was my Uncle James’ obsession with getting a good deal. If there was a yard sale or flea market on the way home from work you could bet money on James coming home with a size 13 pair of sneakers no one needed or could even fit in. My mother had to call my father to remind him Christmas was coming up. Starr had to call my uncle to remind him he was due home five hours ago and to, “Leave the damned microwave cart at the garage sale. We have a built in unit for Christ’s sake! No, we won’t ever need it and neither will anyone else!”
Years later my sister would tease me for talking to strangers when my family would go out to eat. By the age of 6 I had realized that not only did my mother and aunt have fascinating stories, other older people would as well. When my family would go out for dinner, to a movie, to watch fireworks, I could be found sitting beside the oldest person in the vicinity enraptured by their tales. Often times they would talk about how adorable I was, and such a nice young girl. A child being interested in what an old person has to say is like crack to the geriatric. So used to being ignored by anyone with a pulse still above 40 beats per minute, having a little girl willingly walk up and start talking to them was a true treat. I enjoyed the smiles they’d get as I walked up, and to say all the accolades to my looks didn’t feed my ego would be a lie, but what I really wanted was to hear about their lives. Did you fight in a war? How did your knee go out? What is a colostomy bag, and why do you need it?
By the time I was a teenager I started to veer away from these hangouts with random old people. My friend had been the victim of a sexual predator by my first year of high school, and though I wholly blamed her for agreeing to go to a movie with somebody she met in a chat room I couldn’t help my sudden apprehension of talking to strangers, especially old men. They no longer just held a plethora of knowledge, they were also sexual beings. At some point in time Mr. Jenkins from down the road had slept with someone. With the help of Viagra perhaps he still did. I saw the way he looked at the old widow Mrs. Anderson. Gone were my dinnertime hangouts with the senior citizens at Denny’s early bird special. Now I could only talk to people I knew, which in turn greatly reduced my friend base.
This was how I met my mother’s boss, Mr. Patel. He was a nice old Indian man that seemed to take a shine to me right away. He was Hindu, something that I had never come across before and was fascinated by. This was right around the time Madonna decided to partake in eastern religions and Gwen Stefani started wearing bindis in her music videos. Here I was with an actual practicing Hindu that not only liked me but wanted to teach me everything he knew. It was like the heavens had opened up to say, “Nina, here is everything you could possibly ever want out of life.”
Mr. Patel started telling me about his life in India before he moved to America in the 70’s. I would come into work with my mother and spend the rest of the afternoon learning about how Mr. Patel had built his life up from scratch when he migrated. When my school had us pick a country to do a group project on I immediately chose India and begged my group to let me take over the religion portion of the paper. For a week I interrogated Mr. Patel about his religion, and though I was slightly off put by his pineapple ritual for opening a new business I started to see why all of America’s celebrities were jumping on the bandwagon. One day at the end of our interview session Mr. Patel told me I was an old soul; he could see it in my eyes. I had no idea what this meant, but I liked the sound of it. For years I had spent my life longing for the day when I would belong in a room of senior citizens, when I would be able to look at a young person and tell them, “Well, back in my day…” Now, here I was an old soul. I might look young, but inside I was already 85 years old.
I started to fantasize about what my inner 85 year old would do were I to let her out. Once someone get’s old their body starts to go and the mind is soon to follow. The trick is to find that sweet spot when you still have all of your faculties but look like you might be old enough to need an oxygen tank. My inner 85 year old was still a fully functioning human being, but she knew how to get her way. She’d walk into a store, grab a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter and walk out without paying while smiling and waving to the store clerk. If anyone dared come after her for shoplifting she’d simply claim senility. She’d sit on her porch in the afternoons yelling at kids that dared walk on the sidewalk in front of her house. She’d tell her grand kids about her time spent traveling the railways with the hobos and the time she killed a man in Vancouver for looking at her funny. She’d only use a walker when family was over causing them to tell her to take a load off, they’d do those dishes that had been piling up for a week. It was going to be a sweet life, but for now I was only 14; I had to wait it out.
A year ago I turned 25 and had a veritable mental breakdown. All those years spent in the midst of the old had done nothing to quell my fear of death. Though I couldn’t wait to be a cute old lady like my grandmother, I had no desire to ever be so close to death. Turning 25 was the first milestone in my inevitable voyage to the great blackout. My inner 85 year old laughed at my realization, shaking her head that I had to have known this was coming. I was still alienated among people my own age, but the elderly I looked up to were a reminder of where I was headed. Secretly I had always assumed I’d die in a terrible accident before I was 30. Being old and going out in a slow and drawn out fashion had never occurred to me. I had always just seen the elderly as cuter, shorter versions of regular people. Not only was Mr. Jenkins schtupping Mrs. Anderson, he was also going to die.
In the fall of last year my mother called to tell me that Mr. Patel had passed away. He had a heart attack and was doing fine, but in the middle of the night something had gone wrong and he died. By this time my mother was no longer working for Mr. Patel, and I honestly hadn’t thought of him for years. Hearing about his death was depressing, but did it really affect me? Mr. Patel had once told me I had an old soul and that I had lived many lives before. If he was right was he really dead or just moved on into another form? According to my grandmother he’s probably in Hell since he wasn’t a Christian. In my own non-religious belief he’s just a body being reabsorbed by the earth that once created him- though I’m not really sure how that works with cremation. I like his idea better.
*****
Every morning on my way into work I pass this little old man on Lakemont who waves at every car that passes by him. Some people smile uncontrollably at seeing a baby being bounced on its father’s knee. Me, I smile whenever I see an old person happy. Yeah I fear death and now as a result I also fear getting old, but I have had a love of the elderly since I was 4 and it’s hard to break a habit you’ve had for that long. Every morning when I pass George, that’s what I’ve named him in my head, and he waves at me I instantly feel better. George can barely walk and has a hunch so bad it looks like he is constantly searching the ground for pennies, but still he goes for a walk every day to wave at all his friends.
On mornings where George is missing I spend my day worried that something has happened to him. Did he oversleep? Or maybe he just got up early; my grandmother has a habit of waking at 4am some days. If there were ever to be multiple days in a row with no George to greet me on my drive into work I’d probably pull over and knock on every door down Lakemont until I found his house to make sure he was alive and ok. “Please,” I’d say, “it’s the least I can do.” He’d smile and thank me for checking up on him. Later I’d come home to find a fruit basket with a note from George thanking me again for being so kind to a stranger. I'd quickly wonder how he got my address for the delivery before giving in to the chocolate covered strawberries.
This morning turning onto Lakemont I could see the familiar figure of George walking down the sidewalk. Blue and silver striped track suit? Check! Matching baseball cap? Check! Hunched over physique of Quasimodo? Double check! Pulling up the anticipation was eating away at me; my hand already at half mast waiting for George to look my way. A few feet away and my stomach was in butterflies, a smile already gracing my lips. And then he did it, he turned around. He turned his back to me! How can he wave and smile with his back turned to me? And that was it, wasn’t it? He wasn’t going to wave to me. I was snubbed. My geriatric friend denied me a simple gesture of the hand. I wanted to scream out the window, “I’m one of you! I’m an old soul God damn it! You can see it in my eyes!” Instead I kept driving, I lowered my extended arm and I glowered. I may never get that fruit basket from George, but you know what? When he finds himself “fallen and can’t get up” I’ll be the last person to show up frantic on his doorstep to make sure he’s ok. I may love cute old people, but I no longer love you George! Unless of course you wave to me again tomorrow, then we’re cool.
1 comment:
poor george...
he's probably crying himself to sleep right now at the thought of you scowling as you drove by.
I can see his sullen face on the street corner as your car rides off in the distance, a single tear rolling down his wrinkly cheek.
Otherwise, nice piece of writing. But old people still smell.
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