TBT #42: The Man of Tomorrow Tomorrow

I spend four to six hours a day staring at a microwave burrito. I’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks. Not with the same burrito, of course; I change burritos every couple of days. I follow the same routine every time: I unwrap the thing, put it on the kitchen table, sit down, and focus with everything I have left. I just stare at it. Not at the shell or the lettuce or anything inside the burrito, but rather at the whole thing. I focus everything I still have directly at the burrito, straining myself so much that my hands begin to shake and I start to feel a painful throbbing behind my eyes. But I do not stop; not until the pain becomes unbearable. Not until I feel my knees getting weak and my stomach start to churn and spots begin to cloud my vision. Even with all that, I never want to stop. I so much want for things to be like they used to be.

I so much want to destroy the burrito.

Whatever happened to me
You want to know about aging? You want to know what it felt like, for me? It snuck up on me, coming all at once rather than suddenly. One day I’m touching the stars and the next I’m standing in a city park with my grandson and he wants ice cream. And ice cream, of course, is something I can do. Especially for my grandson, who just turned six and, I think, has the kind of intense focus and fierce determination that I did when I was a kid. He’s a perfect blend of that and his grandmother’s inquisitiveness — a child who is not only smart, well-behaved and strong-willed but also, amazingly, fun to be around. I’m so proud of him.

So you get ice cream and it’s a beautiful day. The sun is out and there are birds and dogs and kids on swings, all accompanied by that pretty nice sound that park fountains make and, well, laughter. You know, park laughter. We find a stand and order some cones and I realize, as I’m handed mine, that the ice cream is already melting down the side of the cone. And my reaction, as I see this start to happen, comes in the form of a low straining feeling in the depths of my lungs. My lips part and my lungs ache but, for the life of me, I can’t remember why. There are people around me at that ice cream stand looking at me with such confused looks because here I am making faces at an ice cream cone.

My grandson laughs. It floats and soars and gets swept up with the others. “Whatcha doing, Grampa?” he giggles.

God, I couldn’t say it. I can’t say it. I’m trying to remember if I have freeze breath, son. I am trying to remember if I can FREEZE things with my ultra-cold breath!

“Makin’ faces, kid. Just making funny faces.”

It’s the little things. It’s eating Alphabits in the morning and not seeing “Myzplytyk” spelled out in your spoon. It’s walking out of the house wearing only one layer of clothing, totally unprepared for the day. It’s blurting out friends’ secrets to strangers you have met on the bus, who you’ve struck up a conversation with just to keep busy. It’s standing at the funeral of your supposed arch-enemy, crying your eyes out, trying to remember why he was your arch-enemy in the first-place. He died in a nursing home, blood pouring out of his ears, shouting at me — who brought flowers every day — “I have robots, you know! I have robots that are hidden! Here and in space!”

This past Christmas dinner, my youngest daughter told the whole family about her time with Greenpeace. She joined when she turned 22, citing a desire to make a difference in the world. As the meal progressed, she got into an argument with Thomas, my second eldest, over the merits of the organization. I don’t really know a lot about it, but he argued that her organization was full of “bleeding-heart liberals” who were completely misguided. She argued, in turn, that she was only trying to save the world. Things got really heated, with all the children getting involved, with my wife trying to mediate. I just sat there, watching them talk about the state of the world, thinking of nothing but the fact that I was once able to punch through a mountain effortlessly.

“I saved the world,” I mumbled, dropping my fork. “I saved the world again and again!”

The table silenced for a second as everyone looked at me. “Daddy, you’re drooling,” my daughter said. Then, turning to my wife, she added: “Mom, he’s drooling.”

I still try to get out every now and then, and see some of the old gang. I meet with a friend of mine a couple of times a month at the bar down the street. We actually started out as enemies, but he seems like a good guy. Not the brightest, but that’s not his fault.

I always greet him the same way, never letting him know how glad I am to see someone who is my age, and not young and pretty and spouting things that I don’t even begin to understand.

“Hello,” I’ll say.

“Goodbye,” he’ll say.

And it goes like that. I know his mind is going too, since he’s not as good at the old routine as he used to be. “I’ll have a beer,” I tell the bartender, and he’ll follow up with “I’ll have a beach ball” and, honestly, how a beach ball is the opposite of a beer is something I can’t even begin to figure out.

“Getting old,” I’ll say, for no real reason other than that it is true. “Getting young,” he’ll counter, always the contrarian. Still, he’s a good listener.

“My family sends their best.”

“Nobody sends their worst.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the old times.”

“I’ve been doing a lot about the new times.”

It’s a silly little dance, but one I treasure, just because it reminds me of how amazing my life has been. He’s one of the few supernatural things left in my life. He usually makes me laugh. There’s not a lot to our conversations to make me sad. Or, at least, there usually isn’t. Once, when I frowned and asked him what he did when I wasn’t around, he simply smiled and repeated the question back at me. “What do you do when I’m not around?” he asked, with all the sincerity I had given him.

What do I do? What do I do with my days, with my nights, with how many years I have left? I go to bed early and wake up late, clutch at my chest when I’m out of breath and try to predict when it’s going to rain. I walk through the park, all the while staring at the ground. I used to wonder, when I saw the old men doing that, back when I was younger. I wondered why they walked with their heads down, staring so intently at their shoes.

And now, as an old man, I find myself doing it. And you know why? Do you know why I stare so intently at the ground when I walk through the park? It’s because I used to fly, dammit, and maybe, if I push off the ground hard enough, I will fly once more again.