Friday, May 6, 2011

History

He looked at me.

The stern face with those stern eyes behind those heavy deep-set glasses. He was talking. I might have called it blabbering at another point of time.
He addressed me. From behind those eyes, he looked at me, accusing like.

Like I had done something. Killed him or something like that. I don’t know. I was rolling my eyes. But I was staring at him. Right back at him. He was talking.

Yeah, this man, sitting there was babbling some shit about how life was 35 years ago. I couldn’t care. But then I was listening. I was trying, okay. So he was talking and I think he kept getting lost.
He talked about all of it. How life’s changed. About people changing. He tried telling me about the world and how he paid 7 bucks to get through his school.

I looked at him straight.

He told me about why he is sitting in a chair as an optician. He told me why he wasn’t another guy with a doctorate ripping me off my money. I was still staring at him. He was making sense.
He opened his mouth again. He muttered something about the world with its sins and how everything falls into place.
He closed his mouth. And then opened it again. It was replaying in my head, in slow motion. 30 frames per second. He was doing it again. Saying some godforsaken thing. I was listening. I was. It was making sense finally. I was listening.
And then it stopped. It went back to normalcy.

He talked. I thought he was talking to me.
But I got it this time. He was trying to address a whole generation. Tell them all about what’s going on in his futile life.
I was Generation X. He was the one gone by. Representatives of ourselves and others.

I looked at him. I had a few words to say.
I looked at him again. I noticed the harsh light around his rounded wrinkled face. I stopped myself.
I couldn’t tell him.

He was living in his past.
All I could hope for was he liked it.