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Here’s something you can bank on: the
older you get the more disgusted with yourself you become. Some
disagreement is inevitable I suppose. So what else is new? I’ve never said
anything in my life with which everyone agrees. Who cares? That’s my story
and I’m sticking to it: with age comes a measure of self-loathing.
You can’t run as far as you once could. Stamina is diminished. Eyesight
fails. Hearing goes. Memory isn’t what it used to be. No one likes you as
much as they once did. They pretend to, but you know better. You can see
it in their eyes. It twinkles there akin to pity. Deep down you want to
smack them. But you can’t do that. People in white coats will come after
you! So you wind up crying in your beer, loathing your circumstances and
hating what you have become and filled with anxiety knowing that it will
only get worse.
I suppose that’s why you spend so much time thinking about the past,
searching for the happy times and good memories. Traveling that road is
not always free of speed bumps and pot holes though. Sure you stumble upon
a few precious memories and they bring a Mona Lisa smile to your lips, but
traipsing around in the pastures of remembrance you’re bound to step in a
cow pie or two on the journey. So you have that to live with, too,
returning to the here and now with a post-reminiscent odor about you.
I remember, for example, a colorful character in the little town in West
Virginia where I grew up. We called him Hat-and-Coat. I don’t remember his
real name. I should, but I don’t. He was old in our eyes and probably, in
our eyes, didn’t deserve a real name. He wasn’t old, of course, but to me
and my friends he was. God forbid we should bother to respect him enough
to call him by his real name. It was too much fun watching him react to
the moniker we had hung on him expressly for the purpose of agitating him.
Hat-and-Coat was not packed up real tight. Could have been psychological
trauma suffered from Korea or WWII or worse. I don’t know that either. All
that I knew at the time and all that I remember now is that he was a bit
unbalanced and he wore a heavy thread-barren overcoat and floppy old hat
all the time, even on the hottest of days. As I recall he was never
attired any other way, ever! And whenever we kids saw him on the streets,
which was often, we would, from a safe distance behind him, yell,
“Hat-and-Coat!”
The poor man would then whirl around toward us, shake and twitch and
thrash about with his arms and grunt back at us with a raspy,
unintelligible tirade. Sometimes he would move toward us and we would run
away laughing and yelling back over our shoulders: “Hat-and-Coat,
Hat-and-Coat!” And we continued that through the years without ever
thinking about what was going through this man’s mind or considering what
hurt we might be causing him. I never cared until recently. Now the memory
of him is haunting.
Maybe that’s because now I’m cold most of the time. Circulation is bad I
guess. I stay bundled up pretty well and probably look peculiar in my
heavy coat when others around me are in shorts. It’s probably only a
matter of time before kids begin running up behind me and yelling hurtful
epitaphs.
Sometimes I think I should be in a home, stored away with Alzheimer
patients and Nurse Ratchet looking after me. I think I’ll put that off as
long as I can though. Besides, I have no money and I doubt the home would
want much to do with my kind. Still that’s where I probably belong, mixed
in with other wrinkles. But I won’t go if I can help it.
I’m thinking I need a cause. I’m the happiest when I’m fighting windmills.
Trouble is no one takes me serious these days. Looking back on it, I know
they never did, but I didn’t know it then. I thought what I was saying was
important and people were listening to me. Now I realize that wasn’t the
case and I despair over all that wasted time and effort. On top of that
there are no worthwhile causes left. If you encounter someone pimping a
cause you quickly see it for what it really is: a pompous, self-serving
prig extolling the virtues of something more often than not completely
unnecessary and of no real value to the public good.
In short, you find yourself loathing the world around you and doing what
you can to deny the fact that what you’re really doing is loathing
yourself. And it gets worse with age. And then you die. Hat-and-Coat is
dead now. I will follow him probably sooner than later. And the world will
be better for this, I’m thinking!
Note to those who still think they’re ageless and bulletproof. Your day is
coming. Get ready. And for God’s sake, quit taking yourselves so
seriously. Your future is the same as everyone else’s: maggots and
oblivion. |
