Was walking downtown with the wife yesterday and as we took a shortcut throuth the park a scruffy skateboarding youth brought me up short by asking "you got a phone I can borrow?"
His bad luck I'm the only person I know still clinging obstinantely to his land-line.
But at first it struck me as a question a crazy person would ask you- you're in the middle of a playground and someone asks you for a phone. It took a little mental reset on my part to catch up to his meaning- "oh, that's right everyone has cell phones now, that's what he's talking about."
The original vision the question called up was the bulky baby blue rotary-dial job that was the telephone of my youth (exactly like this one save for the color).
Is this what getting old is?
People ask you simple questions and you have to pause and sort through the mental landfill of outdated junk in your head until you sift out their meaning?
I'm certainly going to be more open hearted to the aged from now on, no matter how confused they seem. Someday I'll be one of them, endlessly trying to catch up to a reality in constant and increasing flux.
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