Age Discrepancy

I was intimidated when I entered the room that smelt slightly acidic like vinegar-soaked roses pressed between stale papers. Some of them had empty stares, but they all wore faces transformed by masses of wrinkles. Pasty-faced, wary of the life they now led that failed to allude to the perplexingly interesting lives they used to know. Once upon a time they were rebellious youths striving for attention just as I was. They had many hidden secrets that they had either forgotten or continued to dwell upon.

I imagined myself playing cards in their circle, openly conversing with each of them and gradually getting to know some on a more intimate level. I would see a spark light in their eye and find pleasure in the wrinkles sinking deeper when their smiles pulled their eyes up in the rolls. One in particular would become my particular friend, and I'd continue to visit even after my Christian Service Hours dwindled and were gone. After the faded cards were put away we'd disperse and my friend and I would discuss things that were familiar between our young identities. We'd laugh, hard, and distract the idle-faces seemingly engrossed in the television set constantly fixed on the news.

We would accumulate an audience sometimes. Eventually they would always deteriorate when the entertainment of our conversation made them jealously regard me as an intruder. Judith had been her favorite poker-partner and had slipped her a card every once in a while under the table, but no... now she reserved that ace for Arwen. Charles used to sit by him by the television daily. It had been a ritual. They didn't usually talk much, but there was a kinship there; now it was gone.

I would go to their funeral. I would listen to the family as they related woebegone tales of what they were like when they were young and how they would be remembered for who they were back when they were healthy and happy. I would cry. I would feel sorry not to have known that young Charles or Judith, but I would be glad for I stored a deep secret bond with this person. I knew them when they were old and happy, a time and experience that no one at that funeral could claim to have known as well as I. I would not step up to share my thoughts. None of them would know my face or why I wept and might feel a sense of disabled pride if I proclaimed my affection for the recently deceased.

Someday, I want to be able to cry at a friend's funeral; a friend I met by circumstance alone, someone who is not within my peer group and two generations advanced from me.

But these were all fantasies. I doubt any of these old men or women would find a connection between themselves and I and desire to pursue it. I expect too much. I smiled meekly at them, few of them responded and those that did seemed nostalgic and withdrawn. No, they didn't want to get attached to me... they were reminded too much of a youth that they had either forgotten or desired to overlook.

I'm such a bastard child. How could I expect so much?

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Music of the moment: Thoughts of a Dying Atheist by Muse