Wrestling with Age

The young man had to go back to work. But the young man didn't want to. The young man was scared of the getting beat to death by the old man. That's right. An old, confused man, who he was hired to help, who he was hired to keep from falling and breaking anymore bones. This same old man gently pierced the young man's heart with the fear of untimely death the previous week. He had thought the young man was a robber, and a ensign for promiscuity. The young man isn't. And doesn't want to be again when he goes to work.

So the young man changed. Remembering his appearance the night of the attack, he altered it, in hopes of altering the old man's reaction. In hopes of becoming someone else in the old man's mind for a night. The young man left his face unshaven, grabbed a brimmed beanie, and his favorite leather jacket. He looked different. This was good.

The young man rung the doorbell. The lovely elderly woman answered, and invited him in. There he saw that she had company over. Two elderly couples, friends, stood around the room, as the young man was introduced by the elderly lady as a "wonderful young man who's here to help my old man."

But the young man was focused on one thing, and that was the reaction of the old man sitting in his favorite chair. The old man welcomed him to his home, genially, kindly. The young man rejoiced, then was embarrassed--realizing that he had disguised himself as the very think the old man had supposed himself to be, a hoodlum, a rascal. Quickly taking off his hat and trying to smile away the bad vibe he was sending, the young man shook hands with the elderly friends.

They left, along with the elderly woman. The old man went to bed. The young man relaxed.

*************************************

An hour passed, an hour of enjoyable study. The young man was happy that the old man was asleep, the old man needed his rest. Yet as soon as he thought this, the old man began clamboring down the hall. The young man called out nonchalantly, offering his assistance--but his offer was drowned out by the old man's war cry. "Prepare to die, you theiving good fer nothin! If'n I was a younger man you would have died a faster death, years ago! As soon as I get over there, you're mine!"

The young man sighed...yet he wasn't worried, there was plenty of hall before the old man got to him. He decided to try a new tactic...confidence.

"You're being silly, old man. I'm no thieve. I'm just here to help."

The young man would have continued, but he was interrupted by the old man, who had just hurled himself at the young man. The young man dodged a two-hands-on-the-throat-chokehold by millimeters. The young man was quick. And sad.

He remembered a time when the old people he helped were in fact old people. They looked old, they acted old, and they smelled old.

How is it, that this man can look, and smell old, but act like a middle-aged Monte Cristo? His thirst for revenge seemed to revitalize him to a level of strength only found in life's prime. The young man doesn't understand this.

The night continued in a constant circle round the house, all for justice. Eventually the old man grew weary, and sat in his chair. The young man sat across the room from him. Everytime the old man began to rise, the young man would match his rise, ready to run. They would rise, stare, then the old man would laughed condescendingly and fall back into his chair. This happened several times.

Finally the old man began to doze. And as he began to doze, he said to the young man. "I know you don't think what you're doing is wrong, but I know what I'm doing is right, and one day you'll realize that family is all that you have, and you'll give all you've got around you to keep it. One day, you'll slip up. And I'll be there. And I'll kill you."

The young man pondered over the old man's last words for the night. Then as he thought about it, his perspective shifted. He still feared the old man, but couldn't help to respecting him.

The young man wants to be just like the old man when he grows up.