Two short moments– but funny ones.
So, I’m walking the dogs around the park today (stunned. Simply stunned. Don’t lie. I can tell you’re all shocked.) Geoffie sees an older gentleman–I’m thinking seventy, maybe? My dad’s age? And she goes up and starts to bark and sniff and bark. He bends down creakily to offer his hand and suddenly, he starts to talk.
Now, ages ago when I was locked up on a farm with only tiny children for company, I talked like this–just an info dump of my life to complete strangers with no give and take for conversation. And after a little big of chatting, I understood why he was talking like this–and it was pretty cool.
See, he’d recovered from two hernia operations. He’d spent six months of the last year in a hospital–and hadn’t gotten COVID, although he understood it was serious and although neither of us were wearing masks (because the paths are super empty in the morning and people will swing a good fifty yards out of their way to avoid each other) we were both very careful to stand about 15 feet away from each other and stand sideways–not shout in each other’s faces by any means. But he wanted to talk. He wanted to talk face to face with someone so bad. He told me that the doctors had told him to walk and that he usually walked this path before he’d had his hernia and that his hernia surgeon was built like a linebacker and apparently he had to be because he’d really put his shoulder into pushing this guy’s intestines back into place. He told me he was retired Navy like the hat said and he’d gone into the medical field as a tech and his wife had been a teacher and his kids had been teachers and nurses.
And he told me he was ninety years old.
And I was like, “Congratulations, sir, on being ninety and recovering and walking around on a nice cool fall day.”
He was all, “Thank you, young lady. You have a nice one.”
And because he was so awesome, I sort of did.
Now the other thing was… well, Steve’s fault.
I was knitting during nighttime television and she decided fuck that, and jumped on my chest. I had ZoomBoy bring me a brush and I started brushing her and brushing her and brushing her until she was ecstatic and I was wearing more Steve than Steve.
And then she left and I was still wearing more Steve than Steve, so, just as Mate went to stand up, I shucked off my T-shirt and started to shake.
“Stop!” he barked, waving his hands in front of his face. “Think about this! What is your endgame?”
“Well originally it was to get rid of some of the Steve but–“
“You weren’t getting rid of the Steve, you were sharing the Steve. I don’t want anymore Steve!”
“Okay, fine,” I grumbled, standing up in my bra and shorts. “I’ll go drop my shirt in the dirty clothes.”
He was like, “Fine,” but as we were both walking to the bedroom (it was his bed time, and I needed a new shirt!) he glared at the cat. “You got her into trouble,” he said.
The cat appeared unbothered.
And that shirt will never be the same.
Oh! And ZoomBoy went back to dance class today. They were all six feet apart with masks and they were all out of shape and hot and pissed off.
And, I’m pretty sure, deliriously happy.
