WHEN WE ARE REALLY OLD

Today a man who is 81 years old cut my hair using a straight razor that he first sharpened with a leather strap. Then another man came into the haircutting store wearing a baseball cap. It seemed that he probably did not have any hair to cut under that baseball cap and thus probably had very little business hanging around the haircutting store. He did not sit down or request to be next. He simply started talking to the barber and sometimes to me. The barber would occasionally pause in his cutting to say, “Oh Boy” at appropriate points in this man’s story. Sometimes I would do that too. He was very blurry to me because my glasses were stowed safely in my shirt pocket under that backwards cape that barbers put on you to keep the clippings off your shirt.

The Hairless Man’s story: he had had some skin cancer removed earlier today. He showed the barber spots on his neck and arm, reassuring him repeatedly with a, “Nothing Serious, Nothing Serious,” as he showed us. These were tiny pink fissures in his skin. “That’s what me and the doctor’s have been doin’ all day!” I nodded and the barber said, “Oh Boy” and the man said, “Yep. You know what? I don’t understand why we don’t live forever! God really made a mistake on that one!”

Josey works for an old lady who has her come over three times a week and do laundry and make her lunch and pet her cats and water plants and such. There was a catalogue for old people in this lady’s house. This catalogue had EVERYTHING an old person could possibly be interested in:

• Small-time Home Gardening
• Denture Care Kits
• Sex Toys
• Foot Trimmers
• Metal Reaching Arms
• Emergency Call Buttons

Notice how the magazine just glosses over Sex Toys like its nothing at all? The makers of this magazine saw no taboo in Ederly Sex as they listed all the things old people are interested in. Josey did not go into detail about these objects, but I think a good one might be blind-folds for all of those people who engage in elderly sex, as the whole ordeal seems way too pruned and varicose for human eyeballs. Maybe also a special blindfold that I can wear on my mind. That would be nice.

My Great-Grandmother, Nana, and my Step-Great-Grand-Father, Lefty, reportedly had raucous sex all the live-long-day and then decided to secretly elope without the consent of their families. This was maybe when they were both in their mid-to-late 70’s. Nana was quoted as saying, “We were wearing out the carpet between our beds! Livin’ in sin!”

WHERE IS THAT MIND-BLINDFOLD I WILL PAY FIFTY DOLLARS FOR ONE!!!1