'Still Got It ~ A Floating Encounter

Out of the corner of my eye I glimpse him working his wheelchair across a muddy patch of thinned grass. He is purposeful in his progress toward me and my party. With some effort he guides his chair, feet scooching one in front of the other, to where we're sitting near the lodge's freshly cut front lawn.

He catches my eye with his one good one and smirks, "I talk too much, but this story's gonna' make you laugh like the devil!"

And it did. As did the dozen-or-so following: stories of daring-do in the second World War. Stories of prairie born mischief and a dead wife ("Twenty years ago that was! I found her dead in the bed!" I attempted a commiserative "Oh, I'm sorry..." but was brushed off with a brusk, "No, no!" and a quick segway into yet another tale.). Stories of dinners of beets and rotten pork ("You never did see such a mess as that!") and practical jokes on nosey neighbors.

"But, I talk too much," he'd wink between bits.

And, obviously, he did not. He could not talk "too much." While it took effort to attend closely to him and to look beyond the frightful shave job someone (he?) had attempted on his patchy, stubbly face that morning, and the lunch on his chin, and the milky haze of his wandering eye, that effort paid off with many devilish laughs.

His were stories worth listening to. "Ninety years old, I am! Yup. Ninety." I'm impressed with his longevity and say so. "No, no!" he quickly blurts, changing the subject to the Harvard Step Test and the absence of love lost between airforce men and the navy. He was, he jokes, a little worried that at ninety he might be losing his sex appeal, but he's quite sure that's not true.

I am transfixed by Alec and could sit with him, happily, for as long as he wished to story tell. But the sun is hot and my mixed company of the aged and the very young is losing interest. I suggest that perhaps it's time to get in out of the sun. My companions are quick to agree, wondering why I delayed so long in ending this conversation.

I turn to Alec for a thank you and a goodbye.

"No, no," he quips. "I talk too much anyway, but I did make you laugh like the devil."