"What was That You Said...?"

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    "What was That You Said?...   or the 'Simple Joys' of Geezerhood!"

Prior to reaching the age of 40 or so, we humans tend to exist in a bubble that is sometimes slightly diaphanous, more often entirely opaque.  That is to say, in our callow youth, we often lack the vision to see beyond our own limited experience.  We tend to be unable to project ourselves out of the youthful moment of our 20-something or 30-something spheres of experience, not yet having surrendered the illusions of youthful immortality, intellectual and physical perfection.  Thus, the young are frequently disinclined to empathize with the more aged segment of the body politic, but rather tend to enjoy deriving humor from those a generation or two beyond their own, particularly those within the grasp of incipient sensory malfunction.

Here's a case in point:  When my wife's parents were traveling by train to some, now forgotten, destination in the western states, her father turned to her mother and whispered something.  Her reply:  "What did you say, honey?"  He repeated himself in a slightly louder whisper.  "What?" she responded again.  He increased the volume a second time, to which she replied,  "Apple pie?"  

"Oh for god's sake, Alma, why would I have to whisper 'apple pie'?"  And then he repeated the statement in a loud voice, amid the stares and whispers of nearby fellow passengers, "I have to go potty!"  ("Alma" was a kind of silly "pet name" for his wife.)    

The story became a favorite among the family, and was told and retold repeatedly, engendering considerable mirth, while both storytellers and listeners nodded in knowing assent, affirming the challenges of advancing age and the sensory defects that often accompany.  "Oh my...  tsk, tsk...  poor old dears, but really quite funny..." among other sighs and laments rolling along on a generous stream of laughter.

But things change and tables turn.  Retribution knocks upon the door, a specter armed with white paint, a bucket of wrinkles, joint pain, flab, dentures, bunions and other transformative birdshot.  There are two episodes I recall in somewhat recent history attesting to my own sensory challenges.  

I'm in a restaurant with my wife and daughters.  The server arrives and begins her introductory oration using the most extreme "Valley Girl" intonations.  She offers her name.  "Johnny?" I quiz.
"Dad, her name's Jenny," my older daughter corrects.  The server announces the day's special.
"Baronial chicken?" I ask, seeking clarification and detail. 
"It's brown ale chicken," my younger daughter amends.  Amid the barely stifled laughter of my wife and children, the server continues to announce the day's menu choices, none of which I hear clearly or understood.  I order a turkey burger.  

More recently, I'm on a toll-free telephone line speaking to a live representative of one of the online hotel-booking sites.  In my daughter's home, the dining room is filled with friends and relatives, all discussing an upcoming wedding for which I'm attempting to engage a room.  The chatter is spirited, a bit loud, conversation flitting and circling like a flock of hungry pigeons.  The customer service agent is speaking with an unusual accent.  "What?  What?" I say.  "What...  could you repeat that, a bit louder?  Did you say the 'Hotel Frimary'?  How are we spelling that?  Oh, oh, I see.  I'm sorry.  Primary.  You want the primary card holder.  You want my name?  You want me to spell my name?"  The laughter is intense, making it even harder to hear.  "Oh, what the hell's the difference," I say in a muted voice.  "I can't hear anything anyway."

A typical conversation with my wife:  "Sweetheart, you want me to pause this thing?  What?  Shall I stop the program until you're finished with what you're doing?  What did you say?"  I walk into the kitchen, repeating my question.
"No need," she says.
"We have no seed?" I say.
"I heard what you asked the first time," she says.  "Do not stop the program.  I'm almost done!"  She's a bit exasperated.
"You're cooking something?" I ask.
"With the dishes," she shouts.  "Go sit down and watch the program; you can fill me in.  Whoever told you your hearing's fine is a lunatic!"  She's speaking quite loudly.  I say nothing more, but wonder if she's cooking something that requires filling.  I go back to the television.  I can't find the volume button...

There are vision issues too, of course.  I see words on billboards that become different words when I'm closer.  My knees and shoulders have apparent dice games going on inside them...  But, mustn't grumble.  I'm still able to find my mouth with a large spoonful of mush...    

Sometimes, I try to project my thoughts back in time to those occasions on which I was less than sympathetic and understanding to the senior population of my own acquaintanceship.  I consider calling to apologize if the parties in question aren't actually dead.  I admonish myself for my lack of compassion.  But then I think, "Oh, what the hell.  The cycles of life are circular, and now I'm the object of amusement, ridicule and scorn by the younger set."  So I guess life has its own method of reconciliation.  My wife is shouting something from the other room.  "What was that you said, Sweetheart?...  The doorbell is leaking?..."  

(Special Note of Attribution and Gratitude:   The perpetrator of this Blog extends enormous thanks to his dearest friend and great love of 40-plus years, Sweetheart, for suggesting the subject matter of this edition, for having an exceptional sense of humor, for putting up with her husband for so many years, for raising two extraordinary daughters with equally exceptional senses of humor!) 

Humbly Submitted, 06-07-14 -- Joel K. 

       
  




     

              

  

    

      

A "Paperless Society"?! -- What a Load of...

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    A "Paperless Society"?! -- What a Load of....

[Bayview,WI -- Special to MofaG, LLC  (An Homage of a Sort!)]   Is this a "Green" concept, or is it a "Greed" concept.  I get confused!  We hear lots of talk and we certainly read a good deal in various media about moving toward a "paperless society."  Being a skeptic, and something of a cynic, I have to think it's an idea promulgated, and propagated, too, by the industry that comprises all manner of financial institutions.  You know...  banks, brokerage firms, investment companies...  credit unions, too, I suppose...  

In this country, it seems whenever an idea is put forth with such unbridled zeal, it has to do with money!  Making more money, saving lots of money, a reluctance to invest or re-invest company profit!  It's a money thing!  Why would a bank want to mail bundles of canceled checks to a patron, for example, when it's a whole lot cheaper to post that information through some sort of electronic medium.  The idea is, one has to admit, I suppose, somewhat laudatory in terms of movement toward a "Green Society," but, I'm convinced it's more about greed than green.

Here's another thing about the so-called "paperless society" toward which we're allegedly headed.  Haven't we all noticed the receipts we now receive at our local pharmacy, or grocery market, for example?  They hand us enough stuff to choke a rhinocerwust -- coupons for unwanted hair remover, oils, sweeteners, pimple stuff, feckless fat-melting pills, balms, fungus ointments, wart dissolvers and other unwanted products many if not most will never use or interest us as consumers!  Clerks roll up the receipt with the coupons and it all looks like a wad of bills, a bank roll!  (Would that it were!)  There's enough paper wadded up with the receipt to wallpaper a small bathroom!  (I tried origami, making a paper duck; didn't work!)

And what about the growing mountain of unwanted paper we receive through the U.S. Mails?  They never seem to get names right!  Once I received an absurdly thick envelope containing an offer of magazines I can't afford that was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Jopl P. Kuriosovsky and the Family.  The covering letter began, Dear Mr. and Mrs. The Family...  

I keep a recyclable, webbed handled bag next to my desk specifically for recyclables.  It's constantly filled with paper material received through the mails...  Credit card offers!  I mean, Great Jumping Interest Rates!  I'm astonished at how many lunatic companies want to offer anyone a credit card!  It's clear they know or care nothing of one's history or fiduciary proclivities or wanton squander or what if one should accept each and every offer, max out the proffered credit cards and go live in luxury in some obscure east European duchy with which the U.S. has no extradition treaty??!!  I mean, the concept of unsolicited credit card offers is simply irresponsible!  Isn't it?  We must all guard against the specter of economic demons in their many insidious forms!!  

As a child, I remember my dear mother -- a model of responsible frugality and deportment -- using the comic pages or newsprint or grocery sacks in which to wrap gifts.  (She chose never to wrap gifts given to her children, the fact of which prompts me to heap praise upon her memory, as the bounty from that and other methods of frugality accrued to her issue!!)  In today's world of paper waste, we purchase great quantities of decorated "gift sacks" and stuff them with forests of tissue paper, we buy truckloads of gift wrapping paper slicing pieces to size while discarding snippets and snibbles...  Greeting cards, envelopes, ribbon...  Too much of it a tragic waste!!     

One Final (final, at least, for this episode) Rant:  Bean counters who seek to destroy our nation with its proud history of economic success -- one that used to be achieved through investing and re-investing in the future of commerce including infrastructure, manufacturing innovation and scientific progress -- ought to be strung up by their beans.  Not all bean counters are inherently fatuous and evil, one must admit.  But those who are shortsighted and unduly directed by elements of greed -- those who seek to destroy the economic well-being of the nation through exclusive devotion to wealthy and overly-privileged shareholders and corporate moguls -- should be papered with cancelled checks and shipped off to an isle of exile.   When there, they can endlessly count beans and babble fiduciary drivel.  

Frugality is a good thing when it benefits the whole.  (This needs to be elucidated so as not to condemn all money-savers, particularly those who operate from a platform of common sense for a common good!!)  

The conclusion, therefore, is that ill-guided bean counters may be responsible for the false, misleading and misguided aims of a so-called "paperless society."  The nation cries out for a committee of righteous, volunteer bean counters who'll dedicate themselves to "paperlessness" in a truly responsible fashion...  e.g.  Remedial training for merchants, collection of newsprint, including Sunday comics, for distribution to all gift-wrapping citizens, support groups for compulsive paper wasters -- including inveterate tissue and gift sack purchasers -- electronic receipts, widely expanded usage of E-coupon-ing, excise taxes on wallpaper and paper gift sacks, "no-paper" zones in public gathering places, paperless pickets...  (just a few random suggestions).  

And, we can all do our portions by refusing paper receipts at our local pharmacies and green grocers, super markets and retail stores, and through organized protest marches that circumnavigate shopping malls using computer-generated picket posters, vs. printed ones, held aloft while chanting, "Paper receipts with shafts of coupons attached are the arrows of Satan!"  (Something of that nature!)  And finally, we should all mark credit card, magazine and other unwanted offers received by mail, "Return to sender; send no more; curses upon paper wasters!!"  (That oughta do it!)

(Special Note of Attribution and Gratitude:   The perpetrator of this Blog extends enormous thanks to his cherished, lifelong friend and colleague, Steve J., a man of exceptional talent in the written word, along with other skills and triumphs some of which he'd prefer to remain solely among intimates and confidants!  Thank you, my friend, for your superb suggestion that ultimately led to this episode!  Or please forgive me, as the case may be!) 

Humbly Submitted, 06-03-14 -- Joel K. 

                            

   

A Strange New Language?! Translators Wanted!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    A Strange New Language?!  Translators Wanted!

"Dude...  Why you gotta bring your Xbox?"  As I entered my preferred coffee house recently, that's the first utterance that assaulted my ears.  (Is everyone named "Dude" today??!)  

"What the hell is an Xbox?" I asked, but not quite loud enough for the young questioner to hear.  I promised myself, however to "Giggle" the thing as soon as I was once again seated in front of my computer.  It's an iMac!  I'm a product of the 21st Century!  I mean, I wanna be hip; I'm a "now" kind of geezer.  (I mean, what if someone brings it up at book club?!)   

The Xbox statement spawned a deeply contemplative moment in my often porous brain, and like an obsessed salmon struggling up a roiling river cataract, the quest began.  I furrowed my brow and mused.  I think I even stroked my chin.  I began to think and wonder how the generations that preceded my own might have reacted to the newly fabricated words so common in today's "Techno-Age."

"Sancho, my Translator!!"  (I hope readers will forgive this paraphrased and possibly obtuse literary reference.)  I mean, let's begin, for example, with Giggle, I mean, Google, perhaps the world's most famous E-Commerce MegaSite.  Now, of course, the noun that has morphed into a verb.  My father would have pulled a quizzical face if I suggested he Google something.  Hell, I believe he would have tossed me out of the house.  Having been an intrepid and decorated FBI Agent, he was highly suspicious of almost everything new-fangled.  I recall he insisted the "Commies" had infiltrated CyberSpace as "dot-commies"!

And then there's "hashtag."  What a ridiculous word.  I asked a lucid 80-something-year-old man what he thought the word means.  "When I was a kid working the coal docks," he said, "Me and Mugwump used to grab lunch at Rosie Sluga's saloon and diner.  If we both ordered a bowl of Rosie's hash, she'd put a name tag on mine to tell it from Mugsy's."  

(I mean, what the hell's wrong with "number sign," or, better yet, because it has only one syllable, "Pound"!)

"Texting," "Sending a Text."  My mother would have said it meant mailing a book to an out-of-town relative.  "Blue Tooth."  Uncle George would have reacted in shock:  "See a dentist, quick!"  Then there's "iPod," "LOL," OMG," "IDK," "TBH," SIM Card," not to mention, "URL," Wi-Fi" and who knows how many other strange new and abbreviated words and phrases.  "Hey," remarks a good friend's 92-year-old father, "I've seen those letters floating in soup!"  

[ "You want a what?  A 'smartphone'?  Are you nuts?!  Telephones aren't smart or dumb...  They're emergency instruments!  When you get a job and your own place, go buy a telephone.  Until then, holler across the alley..."  (Excerpt from an imagined monologue, parent to child!) ]  

What would a past generation or two have made of bookface...  Or is it facebook?  Twitter?  Tweeting?  My foundry pals would have smacked me in the head if I suggested they "Tweet" their chums!  "How many MegaBytes you want?" would have sent many in our parents' and grandparents' generations running for the police.  Imagine trying to explain to our forebears and antecedents the new meanings of "cookies," "back button" and "surfing."  The brain spins freely in the cranium pondering the extraordinary changes in today's electronics-generated "tech-talk," the now frighteningly ordinary vocabulary of our modern age.  I can almost hear my long-dead grandfather:  "What the hell's E-mail?  A letter from Europe?"

So what do we do now, we geezers who love the English language and the elegantly refined speech patterns acquired in our own superbly educated youth?  Do we take up figurative arms in a quixotic (returning, for a moment, to the literary reference cited above!) gesture of defiance?  Ach!  Windmills!  It's of no use.  We must adapt or be wound up in a great web (not the World Wide one!) of anachronism.  Archaic relics, forgotten and ridiculed, an extinct species.  

As for me, I'm hiring a geeky 20-year-old kid with a few pimples on her (or his) chin.  A translator.  I'll do it!  I'll drag my tired brain into the Electronics Age.  I'll become a novelty, a geezer who knows how to sit for hours with friends and relatives, never once looking up, thumbs dashing over an illuminated keypad, OMG'ing and LOL'ing like a crazed "mute-babble" lunatic, inserting the word, "like" at every conceivable juncture! 

   Humbly Submitted, 05-21-14 -- Joel K.                      

  

        

              

The Cab That Followed...

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:      The Cab that Followed a Play...  or, 

                            A PUZZLING PAIR OF MORAL QUESTIONS!

        Our “geezer feet” were screaming to be elevated as we trudged along State Street heading north.  We were two miles from our hotel following what would eventually be an eight-mile trek that included a tour of Chicago’s Chinatown and its outstanding Cultural Museum.  We had planned an evening walk to the Steppenwolf Theatre, but our exhausted, aching feet would carry us no further than the Red Line Subway headed north to Clybourn and North Avenues near Halsted.  We dined at Vinci, a fine restaurant a block from the theatre, prior to a much-anticipated evening of live theatre, all part of our 40th Anniversary celebratory weekend.   

As its central theme, the play, Russian Transport, offers a complex and ponderous moral dilemma.  Intriguingly interrelated, our transportation from theatre to hotel presented yet another moral question, this from a cab driver propelled into a kind of self-imposed exile.   

The “first drama,” Russian Transport by playwright Erika Sheffer is currently running at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, the company’s name inspired by the Hermann Hesse novel that one of its co-founders was reading at the time of the theatre’s founding and inaugural production.

At the conclusion of the two-and-a-half-hour Russian Transport, we were no more than a few heartbeats out the doors when a taxi cab practically hailed us, beginning an almost karmic coincidence.  We jumped in for the relatively brief trip back to our hotel, and immediately began a spirited discussion of our impressions of the play.  The cab driver joined our conversation without hesitation, or invitation.  “What did you see?  What was the play about?”

My wife, Mary, began to describe its theme of a struggling Russian-American family living in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, NY.  “The family, particularly the mother...  well, I guess, to be accurate three of its members, were conflicted over the question of what we, in this country, will do to earn money, how we justify our means of earning income and what we’re willing to do to that end.”

The cabbie asked in reply, “What do you mean specifically, and what did you conclude?”

Mary said, “Well, I think it’s easy for those of us who lead relatively privileged lives to pass judgement on people, especially those from different social and economic circumstances, such as the people in this play.  The father operates a barely surviving business.  The family matriarch’s brother, Boris, arrives from Russia as the family’s ‘star boarder.’  He’s engaged in an illegal but very profitable business.  The mother is willing to allow her young son to be lured into Boris’s illicit business, while imposing polar opposite, strict rules of behavior on her teenage daughter.”  Mary went on to provide added details to describe the play’s narrative and central theme.

“In this country,” the cabbie responded, “I think Americans should be more judgmental.  We should question motives; we should hold certain people to account for the harmful and destructive ways they employ to earn money, particularly those who use highly questionable or unlawful means to generate their fortunes.”  He cited what he termed a real example of a New York and Chicago-based business that, he said, exploited political influence and used nefarious means toward attainment of significant wealth.

“Gatsby-esque,” I chimed in.  “I mean, the sham of the so-called ‘American dream.‘ The very rich in this country have cleverly crafted a highly effective propaganda intended to justify the acquisition and maintenance of great wealth.  The idea being, ‘if I can do it, so can you Mr. or Ms. ‘average American,’ and by any means you choose.”

The discussion continued, serve and volley, as we rode into the night.  Eventually, he pulled to the curb to let us out at our requested stop.  Over the course of another half an hour or so, the driver told his story.  “I’m originally from Karachi, Pakistan,” he began.  “I’m in this country on a fellowship.  I’m a cardiac surgeon, but I need the income from driving a taxi cab to earn a living during the fellowship period.  It is difficult to listen to a constant stream of racist remarks and insults, but I feel I have to endure until the (fellowship) process is concluded, and I can return to being a working doctor and surgeon.”

“I’ll bet you collect a great many stories through the conversations you hear,” I said; then added jokingly, “You could probably even achieve a secondary specialty in psychology.”  

His brief laugh was joyless, and then he said simply, “No.  That’s of no importance.”  He went on, “I left my country following a disagreement with my mother and family over a marriage arrangement.  My mother is a very strong and forceful woman, and so I left under difficult circumstances, abandoning my home, family and religion.  I could not accept my family’s demands or its particular ethos, one with which I could not agree.  But, because of all that I’ve seen, all that I’ve witnessed, I’m disheartened and distressed.  I fear for the future, and not just for this country.  I’m considering a return to religion...”  

Our conversation was fascinating, if all too brief to acquire any deeper sense of the man’s own moral and intellectual dilemmas and how they’d be resolved, if at all.  We exited his cab on State Street near Lake and walked a short distance to an all-night market.  

As we walked, I thought about this unusual “doctor / cabbie,” his nocturnal wanderings through the often frenzied streets of Chicago after dark, even as my wife and I thought about the fate of Russian Transport’s tormented characters.  When we left them, as the theatre lights dimmed finally consuming them in utter darkness, we were left to contemplate their uncertain futures, the profound difficulties and challenges imposed upon them by a thoughtful, unflinching playwright, gratified that at least we didn’t have to endure a “Hollywood ending.”  As we ambled from the market back to our hotel, our aging feet reminding us anew of the day’s adventures, I thought again about the play, the taxi driver, 40-plus years of marriage, my most cherished friendship, joys yet to come, puzzles yet to solve.

Humbly Submitted, 05-11-14...  Joel K.

Eccentricity is a Virtue... Isn't It(?!)

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    Eccentricity is a Virtue...  Isn't it (!?)

As a younger man -- somewhere, perhaps, in my late 30's to mid-40's -- at the height of my powers as, quite possibly, the hemisphere's most inept salesperson, I had a career in sales at a promotional marketing company of some prominence.  (I should have listened to my father and found work as a civil servant with a guaranteed pension at the end of obligatory servitude!)  Some years ago, the company was absorbed by a larger firm and is now but a memory in the annals of sales and marketing mythology.  At the time, the company for which I labored had a most impressive product showroom from which clients, employees and their families were empowered to make wholesale purchases of varied merchandise.

After much cajoling by my delightful and memorable mother (who departed the mortal sphere some two dozen years ago), I invited her to visit that inviting and richly appointed showroom to shop and, in theory, effect purchases to her heart's content.  She accepted.  My dear mother alternately prowled about the showroom like a preying leopard or flew and flitted, a great wattled crane in search of sustenance, plucking up and inspecting each gorgeous gift and bauble for an hour and a half, perhaps it was fully two hours, eventually paying for and preparing to make  off with bags full of "practically stolen" (her words) treasures.  

Each product offered in the showroom was represented by a single "not-for-purchase" sample.  The inventory was kept in a commodious warehouse located behind the sales counter.  And each was identified by a product number and priced, using a special secret code, that we who worked for the company freely divulged to clients and family members without compunction.

"Oh my gosh," my mother exclaimed repeatedly.  "Is that all this thing costs!"  She was pleased.  I asked her frequently to keep her voice modulated as I didn't want her to call attention to herself as a would-be daily or weekly devotee, perhaps losing her, and my, privileges as a showroom shopper.  Eventually, I carried her purchases outside and loaded them into her large red automobile, kissed and bid her goodbye, and then returned through the showroom headed for my office in another wing at the rear of the company's sprawling building.  

As I made my way through, one of the two women who ran the showroom stopped me and asked in genuine wonder and unconcealed excitement, "Who was that lady?!"

I should explain.  My mother was dressed in what I labeled her "Atla the Hun" hat, a bright purple affair ringed by fuzzy purple fur and forming a pyramid-like point at its apex.  She wore

Not my mom...  but, you
get the idea!

a leopard-skin-print jacket and skirt, purple and red shoes that had upturned, Persian-looking toe features, enough jewelry to outfit Istanbul's Grand Bazaar -- including at least eight rings, a giant brooch and several layers of necklaces -- and enormous purple-framed glasses, secured by a golden chain, to complete the ensemble.  My mother was nothing if not eccentric in dress and behavior.

Responding to the surprised showroom co-manager's question, I said, perhaps predictably, "That was no lady, that was my mom!"  Both showroom women registered shock and then mild astonishment, finally bursting into great eruptions of laughter.  I then added, to forestall their probable embarrassment, "My mother would be offended if she were not regarded as extravagantly eccentric.  You should see her artwork."  At that, and without waiting for further comment from the two women, I walked briskly to my office.

It wasn't long after that, my wife and I were attending a surprise party, one of a series of such events that a good friend of ours obnoxiously foisted annually upon his spouse, a highly reluctant recipient.  She was and is, unfailingly -- fortunately for their marriage -- not merely a good sport, but possessed of a sweet and accepting disposition.  I was engaging in what my wife insists is my customary ridiculous and silly, at times, somewhat outrageous behavior, enhanced on that occasion by generous inhalation of spirited beverages.  My friend's aging mother was residing with his family at the time.  At evening's end, according to my friend who reported to me by telephone the following morning, "My mother says you're almost eccentric."  

Slightly offended by the modifier, "almost" -- but knowing how proud my own mother would be -- the comment was high praise, and in the end I felt richly complimented.  When I mentioned the remark to her, my mother said, "You're lucky you take after me, and not your father, who, as you know, prefers to be an ancient curmudgeon."  

At my current age, I cherish the label, and like an expensive suit of clothes, I prefer to be cloaked in eccentricity vs. any number of optional identifiers.  And even though I may still embarrass my children and grandchildren, I think they harbor a kind of secret admiration, not for me alone, but for all who float obliviously on a billowy cloud of Eccentricity.  

Humbly Submitted, 04-24-14 -- Joel K.       

  

    

Ageism and Callousness

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    Ageism and the Callousness of Youth...  with a Choice of Toppings!

Like blows from Thor's Hammer, life can sometimes hurl great challenges at the unsuspecting.   One must always be vigilant!  Driving into a parking lot on a pleasant spring day, my wife and I were poised to make certain purchases from a local pharmacy.  Upon entering the shopping enclave, not really a strip- but more an L-shaped mini-mall, we found the parking area, as usual, jammed.  Given our prevailing temperament on that soft, spring day, we chose to wait patiently for a parking space to be vacated.

An elderly gentleman, laden with packages, ambled toward his vehicle, and ultimately climbed aboard.  (Had we not been imbued with exceptional patience, the nectar of human kindness flowing like sweet honey through our vessels, we might have been tempted to enumerate his shambling steps!)  Meanwhile, we had idled our modestly-sized sedan perpendicular to a row of vehicles, our flashers appropriately illuminated for safety.  As the elderly man backed out, in our direction, his just one car removed from ours, a smallish red two-door auto sped into the space, even before the elderly driver could begin his forward motion and thus make his exit.  This action forced the elderly man to stomp on his brake, in whichever position his gear shift was placed. 

The young driver of the red two-door hastily exited his vehicle.  We could readily spy the sign atop his car that announced something like, "Yummy Pizza...  Seriously Rapid Delivery!"  I jumped out of my vehicle and suggested to the young driver, he in his late teens or early 20s I surmised, "That was a shitty thing to do!  You could see I was waiting for that space!"  

Whereupon the youngster replied, "F**k you, old man!" 

At that moment, a 40s-something woman had just emerged from a sandwich shop.  Having heard the exchange between the pizza delivery kid and myself, her face wore a shocked

expression.  I looked directly at her, pointed and said, "He called me an old man!"  Her mask of

shock transformed itself into one of amusement.  Mirth consumed her.  I hoped the pizza kid had heard, and I believe he did.

As something approaching another 10 minutes passed, we eventually secured a parking space, and did so respectfully, allowing an elderly woman to board her vehicle, check her makeup, adjust her rear view mirror, unwrap a chocolate, place her cellular telephone to her ear, light a cigarette and then at last back out of the space.  My wife and I smiled pleasantly, of course, exuding patience.

Unable to let the incident with the pizza kid pass without an appropriate response on our part, after installing our vehicle, my wife and I headed to the pizza parlor, entered and asked to speak to the owner or manager.  The delivery kid had apparently, by that time, already left with another stack of pizza boxes intended for home or business place destinations.

A 40-ish man appeared.  "May I help you."   

"I hope so," I said.  "Your delivery driver treated us with extreme rudeness..." and I then related to him what had transpired between us just 10 or 15 minutes previously.  My wife said, "If that kid is representative of your establishment's treatment of people generally, never mind older adults, you won't be in business much longer.  I can't imagine recommending your place to people we know."  

"I'm so very sorry," the man replied.  "I'll certainly have words with him.  Please accept my sincere apologies.  This is an outrage, and I'll make certain it doesn't happen again.  I hope you'll visit us again, but under pleasanter circumstances."  

Back in the parking lot, I said to my wife, "Cheap jerk should have had the good grace to offer us a free pizza, at least a coupon or something.  You know what I really wanted to say to that pizza kid:  'You snot-nosed pizza-faced jerk of a duck dropping...' something to that effect.  Damn nasty little snip of a pizza pusher!"  

My wife said, as if in a private musing, "Were we as disrespectful to older people in our younger days?  Did we ever think how we'd want to be treated by the young at our age?"

"A fair question," I said.  "I hope we were a bit more sensitive and caring, but I don't know..."  and my thoughts trailed off to a plane of distant memory.

"Ah, but with advanced maturity," my wife added, "comes wisdom and restraint.  I'm so proud of the way you handled things.  Do you think we'll ever actually patronize that pizza place?"  The question was loaded, as if with sardonic sausage.     

Chuckling, I replied, "Are you kidding?  It's possible they serve a large pie covered in black ants, centipedes and rabbit droppings.  Besides, I'll only order pizza from our favorites, just the two of them, and you know who they are."

"Well," my wife said, we should always try to be patient and understanding.  Maybe the pizza kid has an unhappy family life, a mean parent; he's having a lousy day to boot."  

"F**k him," I said.  We both laughed good naturedly as we ambled with slow deliberation toward our car, into a parking lot now glutted with impatient patrons, each circling like a vulture poised to strike, fiercely spying for a target to pounce.   

Humbly Submitted / 04-07-14 -- JK