|
 There
is a payoff, Doc told us, for getting the aches and pains of old
age. Doc should know. We have it on good authority that he is
actually older than a flat, brown rock.
"Sure," said Doc, in his usual cheerful way. "You get gray hair, or
maybe kinda bald like ol' Steve here, and you develop wisdom, which
we all know just means you know not to argue with your wife, right?
So then what happens? Your grandchildren think you have all the
answers."
Doc leaned over conspiratorially. "I LIVE to embarrass my
grandchildren."
Dud wanted specifics.
"With me," Doc said, "it's dancing. You see, they are all teenagers
now, and therefore they are cool and know everything, and the world
couldn't turn without them. So when their friends come over and they
crank that stereo up to where it's killing the neighbor's geraniums,
I ask them just once to turn it down."
"Takes me a lot more than once," Dud said. "I swear those kids are
hard of hearing."
"But do you dance for them?" Doc asked. "You see, if they don't turn
it down, I kinda totter to my feet and start what the kids call the
Grandpa Boogie. I mean I shake it like an Egyptian pharaoh. I wiggle
and jiggle and stick out my chin like this ... and sort of thrust
myself around the floor until one of them dashes over and shuts off
the music. Then I go sit down and read the paper again. The first
couple of times I did that, the kids got me to one side and begged
me never to do that again. I guess they were just jealous of my
moves.
[to top of second
column] |
Well, I hated to show them up in
front of their friends, seeing as I could dance better than they
could, but the music was too loud. I tell them when the music gets
more than just kinda regular, I can't help myself and dance fever
hits me like a sledgehammer."
"So," Steve said, "how did you do it? I mean, show us, OK?"
So Doc stood up and went into spasms, twitches and slides that had
the whole coffee shop cracking up, and people didn't know whether to
applaud or call the paramedics.
"The really great thing," said Doc, sitting back down, out of
breath, with his coffee, "is that these kids think they invented
being cool. And I blind-sided them with great mo-o-o-o-ves! I showed
them a slink or two.
"And you'd be surprised how much quieter it is when they come over
these days."
[Text from file received from
Slim Randles]
Brought
to you with a smile from Slim’s just-out fun novel, Whimsy Castle.
At better book stores and on the internet at Amazon, Kindle, Barnes
and Noble, Ebay, Thriftbooks and Page Publishing. |
