I suppose every town has a few. Today I passed two of ours: a couple of lumpy-shaped older men--not old enough to be called "elderly," but certainly past middle-age--who shuffle around town a good deal in various stages of dishevellment. One likes to think of mature adulthood as a time marked by dignity--but that doesn't seem to be the case with these gentlemen. Today, the one had on jean shorts and a t-shirt, and was making his way down University Street holding a half-empty bottle of Diet Coke as he peered through his thick smudgy glasses at the sidewalk. The other passed me in the grocery store, his short-sleeve button down shirt crammed with ball-point pens in both chest pockets--probably at least twenty in total. He was wearing a little girl's backpack, polka-dotted pink.
I wonder how thoroughly they are "present."
And I think, too, of all the many ways a life can go wrong--how even the strongest character can be derailed. We are so, so fragile.
1 comment:
WoW! How observant! Well your dad is not yet shuffling and doesn't wear a bunch of pens in his pocket. We all get there but some with a better handle on their mental faculties. Memaw was fragile, but she could still out-thing some of us, even at 90. I appreciated your thought-ful post!!
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