On the Cusp of My Seventh Decade - IP

On December 17, 2013, I will be sixty years of age. I find it hard to write autobiographical stories. So I don’t do it. And I won’t do it now. I’ll make something up.

I’ll write about a man who, only this morning, was unable to help his wife shovel the snow. He was breathless as soon as the cold laid a freeze on his lungs. He has the lungs of a toad. For that he uses an inhaler, which is now out of puffs. Just like him.

As fate would have it, two industrious teens happened by and offered to shovel the man and his wife out of their blizzardy condition for a measly fifteen dollars. That’s seven fifty per shoveler to dig us out of a foot of snow. Unless these teens have just been transported from the 1950‘s and their parents names are Ozzie and Harriet, I’d say they were cheating themselves out of a decent wage. The couple gave them a twenty each and felt better for it.

I can’t say as much for their neighbor, who jumped all over the fifteen dollar deal without so much as a ‘You gotta be kiddin’ me? Fifteen bucks for two shovelers and all this snow? No way! That‘s a lot of work!’ She simply paid them the putrid wages, got in her car and went shopping with her savings.

But back to this business of getting autobiographical all of a sudden. It’s not going to happen. But I will write about a man who has been known to slip a disc after a good sneeze. I’ll bet that hurts. Having to lay flat on his back all day long, moaning and groaning like he was having his teeth pulled by a masked intruder kneeling on his chest. Having his wife, his son, and his son’s girlfriend mock him as he makes known his anguish with every little twitch of his miserable body. Old man noises. That’s they call me. I mean him. That was a typo. I’m just too tired to go back and correct it. I am turning sixty, you know. Not that’s it’s something I care to talk about. I’m a writer of make believe. For instance:

Once upon a time there lived a man who procrastinated about going to the store to buy some groceries for tonight’s dinner. He was going to make chicken francese for his wife, but was out of lemons. So he searched the web for a fresh lemon delivery service. To no avail. Instead, he was directed to a site with pictures of women who had breasts that looked like lemons. 'What the hell are you looking at?” said his wife. 'Lemons,’ he told her. “But I can’t find a delivery service.’ She called him a pig and left the room. But he’ll win her back with his chicken franchese. She’s a lovely, forgiving woman.

I might add that the man is quite handsome, as well. Some say he looks like Richard Gere, had Richard Gere been a handsome man instead of just good looking. The man loves telling the story about how he was stopped by an elderly woman at the grocery store, who asked him if anyone ever told him looked like Richard Gere?

‘You’re going to be telling that story forever. Aren’t you?’ said his wife on the way home.

‘Damn straight,’ he told her. ‘At my age I’m taking whatever I can get.’

The man I’m writing about just happens to be writing something as well. But I see that he wants to stop now. He feels the need to get up off his lazy duff and, coincidently mind you, go out and purchase some lemons. He’d better bundle up, though. It’s cold out there. I sure hope he picks up some premium beers while he’s out shopping for those lemons. They would go so well with a chicken francese.