Not Old, Just Older

Ok so lightening up is not always my strong point. I use this blog as a place to sound off what I'm thinking, lay down the cracked paving slabs of my attempts at poetry and short stories and to pretty much keep myself sane when I'm living in a flat by myself.

I want to sell this place. I've come to that conclusion. If I could, I'd sell this place and buy a nice little cottage by the sea, quit my job and live happily ever after with my perfect woman. But as nice as it all sounds and as fulfilling as I might perceive it to be, there's a whole heap of reality in the way before that could ever happen.

And reality tends to bite. Hard.

So I have made it my objective to find something rather amusing every day to keep me smiling. I mean, I smile quite a lot, even if my smile is not particularly great (Hey, I'm British, very few of us have good smiles...) and I find humour in many, many situations. Comes with the territory I guess. You turn tragedy into humour as it helps you deal with the crapola that life likes to throw at you when you're in my line of work.

Sharing such comedic gold can be tricky though, because obviously I don't want to compromise myself but I do have a host of short scenarios and this one in particular, that respects everyone involved and doesn't compromise anything. I hope...

---

Picture the scene. A young man stands with a slight predisposition towards chubbiness, two days beard growth, short, dark spiky hair with the flecks of grey appearing at the temples; stands with one hand in his pocket and another clutching an A4 notebook with a number on the front. He's wearing non-descript grey trousers that were ironed 3 days before and have been worn every day since so that the crease has now largely fallen out. He wears a lilac shirt with a matching (surprisingly) tie that is creased at the area where his stomach protrudes slightly over the cheap belt of his trousers. On his right wrist he wears a silver coloured watch with a blue face that clearly does NOT match his shirt. A pair of cheap black shoes completes the look. Clearly a gorgeous man. He is stood in a hospital corridor by a lift, near to a toilet, rocking on his heels slightly.

This man is me.

An elderly gentleman can be seen in the near distance, some fifteen feet from me. He is huddled over a walking frame and is wheezing slightly. He is wearing a hospital gown that is done up tightly in an attempt to hide his modesty. He looks slightly bemused. He glances around and he sees me. I see him. Our eyes meet and his face crinkles into something resembling a smile as his tongue protrudes ever so slightly. He begins to shuffle towards me.

At a snails pace.

He grunts with the effort.

Five minutes and fifteen feet later, he arrives in front of me, smacks his lips, wheezing heavily.

"Are... Are you a doctor?"

I blink. Once. Actually, twice.

"What seems to be the problem, sir?"

For the more vigilant among you, no I did not answer his question. Why? Fuck knows. Seriously.

"I'm... a bit lost, doctor... Can you tell me... which floor Ward B3... is on?"

Using my super-duper powers of observation, I spy a lift some twenty feet away and next to the lift entrance was a sign indicating the different floors. I nod knowingly to the elderly gentleman who at point-blank range has lost all of the charm that old people have and is now merely a person who smells slightly of rancid old piss and damp farts. Unexpectedly, I wrinkle my nose in disgust and its probably pretty obvious. Bless him, he keeps smiling as I reply with distaste in my voice.

"3rd floor, sir, if you care to take the lift just over there...?"

He reacts as if she should clearly have known the answer to his own question. Which if he had just come from there, then he clearly should've.

"Thank you so much! I must have taken the lift down here but I don't really remember."

He starts to shuffle off. He hits the five feet mark after a few minutes, the waft of old urine left in his wake. At this point, my colleague returns from the toilet having had his emergency dump and I ask him where we're headed.

"Ward C4 mate, we'll have to take the lift."

I nod, then narrow my eyes. The old man is nearing 10 feet from me. The lift is five feet further than that. I hurry my colleague and we walk past Old Man River and hit the button for the lift. Lucky us, it's already on our floor. We step in and turn, as you do, to face the doors.

Three feet to go and he looks at me with a spark of recognition.

Knowing I was sparing us a fate worse than death: of having to share a lift with a man stinking of urine, I rapidly press the button for the fourth floor. As anyone would.

The doors don't close.

The lift doesn't move.

Old Man River takes another shuffling step forward, mere inches now from the doors as my eyes widen and everything shifts into slow motion.

He reaches one fragile hand forward as if by reaching over the lift threshold with a hand, he would stop the doors from closing.

The doors slam shut with a resounding clang as the old man seems to smirk at me as he's left on the outside, nothing but the faint reek of acidic piss suggesting that he was ever near us. Then something else assails my nostrils.

In the corner of the lift is a human turd. Steaming.

And in my minds eye I see the smelly little old man back downstairs in the lobby laughing to himself, knowing that he got me good.

Fair play.