“Maybe it’s cause you’re getting old.” I said it like it was a fact, because it was a fact. He’d run this farm his whole life, the first eighteen years by his father’s side, the rest of the sixty-two by himself, except for his wife and sons, but his wife was dead and his sons were gone, and he was still holding on, even though he’d earned himself a break. Every time something on that farm required a repair he got even more angry about it than the time before that. I was the same way as him, I was a perfectionist who liked everything a certain way and if it was changed, broken, or didn’t run without a catch I got uptight. I was only seventeen but in my seventeen years I had learned better than he had that it doesn’t always work that way. Things broke down, things weren’t always perfect. I guess I probably learned that pretty quick because that was the way my life was, if it ran a day without a catch I’d think I was in Heaven. He was eighty and still holding on to the old farm, even though he had diabetes and a bad hip he thought he could make it run as perfectly as the day he had inherited it, and this time when something went wrong he lost his temper again, this time throwing his hands up in the air and asking the mental to do list he kept, “Why is it getting longer every day, it used to be I had five tasks a day and I could trust that at the end of an honest day’s work they’d be done, and I’d be ready for the next day. But no, everything has to go wrong. A fence post breaks, so I repair it, but the post pounder I need to repair it is missing a part, and when I go into town to pick up the part it won’t be in until Tuesday, in the meantime my purebred angus heifers are in with the neighbour’s blasted hybrid bull! Why is everything going wrong?!”
And I couldn’t keep my opinion in any longer, “Maybe it’s cause you’re getting old.”
“Don’t tell me I’m getting old!” He threw down the wrench he was using to do the job of a hammer, a hammer that he had misplaced two days ago and still hadn’t recalled the exact location of.
“What’s with it with you people? Everybody thinks there is something wrong with getting old. Well in my mind there isn’t, least not if you’re a Christian. If you’re a Christian getting old means getting one day closer to meeting your Maker. For me? Getting older means one more day towards college, or a new job. And you know what that means? That means new people who vex me and don’t understand me but tell me they know me, and then get after me for what they think they know. It means another day of seeing shit happen in this world that could be changed if everybody in the world knew and believed and loved the Truth. And the only way that people are going to come to know and believe and love the Truth is if the people who do know the Truth get off their lazy asses and start knowing and believing and loving the Truth themselves. Which sucks because that means we have to do something more than love ourselves.
“So don’t tell me to not tell you you’re getting old. When I say you’re old I’m saying it with jealousy, I wish I was one day closer to not having to have to get out of bed every morning and face boys talking about which drunk girl they had sex with on the weekend, and then talking about their one virgin buddy who hasn’t given it up yet and is too lazy to get a girl, and wanting to stand up and yell at them that maybe he doesn’t want to give it up, maybe he’s saving it for somebody special. I don’t like the idea of not being able to yell at them that they’re just jealous that they haven’t had the self control to hold onto it, but I couldn’t say that in love, so I don’t say anything at all. And then for the rest of my week, my month even, I wonder if perhaps there was something I could have said in love to make them want to know, believe and love the Truth.”
“Getting old is just one less chance of seeing the year when they finally outlaw religious practices of any kind in the name of equality. Getting old is one less chance of seeing the year when water stops being free. Getting old means you don’t have to watch as Earth rips herself apart trying to maintain a livable environment for humans while we pump her full of toxins. Getting old is one less day of having to watch humanity rip itself apart. It’s one less day to watch this world come to a painful and dark end.”
I stopped ranting for a moment to pick up the wrench and put it back in its proper place. Then I handed him the hammer I had found beside the broken fence post that morning. I wished it was all I could do to remember where I had placed my hammer, or my reading glasses, cause maybe if I was that absent of mind I wouldn’t have the sanity to dwell on the things that make me want to stay in bed for weeks at a time.
“Face it old man, getting old’s a blessing in disguise.”
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