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. 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."
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Brought to you
with a smile from Slim’s just-out fun novel, Whimsy
Castle. At better
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Thriftbooks and Page Publishing.
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