flashquake Nonfiction

To Hell With Twilight!
by Wayne Scheer

"I never felt old until I turned eighty," Jack Monday told us. "That's when my knees gave out. The pecker went soon after that."

"Pop." My wife, Fran, shook her head. "No one wants to hear about your pecker."

"I'm sorry," he said tightening his lips and lowering his eyes to show contrition. Pausing just long enough for his audience to go silent, he shouted in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the restaurant, "Ah, there isn't enough of my pecker for anyone to care about."

The family, sitting at a long, dark wood table at an Outback restaurant, laughed, although most of us wished we could be transported instantly to another planet. We had all experienced the daughter-as-straight-man routine hundreds of times. But it was still funny.

Turning to a middle-aged couple at the table next to ours, Jack struck up a conversation. "Did you ever hear the one about the Italian, the Chinaman and the Jew who go to a whorehouse?"

"Pop, please."

"What? You want me to say 'brothel?'"

Fran's younger sister, Mary, pointed at the couple. "They don't seem to mind." She grabbed Fran's hand.

As Jack told his joke, the family tried to regain normal conversation. Mary asked her son what he wanted to eat and Fran apologized to Kathy, our daughter-in-law, for her father's language.

"I grew up with an Irish father and an Italian mother," she said. "I've heard worse."

"Wait'll Grandpa warms up," our son warned her. Josh and Kathy had recently celebrated their first wedding anniversary and Josh still thought it necessary to teach Kathy the ways of our family.

Jack Monday, at eighty-five, was exactly like the Jack Monday I met when I started dating Fran thirty-two years earlier. Until he stood up. He needed a walker now, one with a seat, so he could sit down and rest every ten or so steps. But inevitably, he'd use the time to sing. "When I see my sugar, I get a lump in my throat."

The first time I met Jack, I was a nervous teenager wanting to take out his daughter. Fran's mother answered the door. As politely as possible I introduced myself and asked if Fran was ready.

"Ready for what?" a voice boomed from a corner of the room. I turned towards the voice and there sitting on an overstuffed chair was what I had expected least-a grossly overweight man in his underwear watching television, a napkin stuffed into the top of his T-shirt like a bib, gnawing on what looked like a turkey drumstick.

"Hello," I said. "My name is ..."

"I don't care. I'll forget it as soon as you tell me."

I stood there not knowing what to say or what to do with my hands. "Be nice, Jack," I heard Fran's mother say.

"Come here, son, and I'll French kiss you."

"Pop," Fran called out.

"What? You don't want me to give him tongue? You better not either." He turned towards me. "Be sure to bring her home by nine."

"B-but ..."

"He's just teasing," Fran said kissing him on the top of his balding head. "You told me you'd wear pants, Pop."

"Hey, what's-your-name," he called as we were almost out the door. "How much is fifteen times fifteen?"

"Umm," I stalled as I tried calculating in my head.

"You're slow. That's good. You can go out with my daughter."

Now, perhaps one hundred pounds lighter but still nearly two hundred and fifty pounds while only about five feet six inches tall, Jack Monday was asking the waitress if her eyes bothered her.

"Uh," she mumbled as both his daughters cried out in unison, "No, Pop."

It was too late.

"Because they bother me." He followed this with at least ten other terrible pickup lines.

We all groaned. "Give her your order, please." Fran held her head in her hands.

"I want a rare steak," he said, not missing a beat. "Well done."

The poor waitress just stared, a smile frozen on her lips. Eventually, he gave her his order.

We watched in amazement as he finished his steak, a huge pile of fries, onion rings and at least one full loaf of bread.

"You want dessert, Pop?" Fran asked.

"Can't. The diabetes. Can't have sugar."

In his own way, he was taking care of himself. After his last heart attack, just a month earlier, his doctor told us statistically he had less than a year. But statistically he should have been dead at least twenty years earlier.

When his wife died after they had been married fifty-four years, we all thought he would never recover from the resulting depression. For almost a year he spoke of suicide, barely ate, even stopped telling his jokes. His apartment was dark, as he no longer replaced light bulbs when they blew. He refused to visit with either of his daughters, fearing that they wouldn't let him return home.

Then one day we went to visit him and all the lights were on in his apartment, the radio played swing music from the thirties and forties. His first words to me were, "Did I ever tell you the one about the one-eyed Russian?"

"Yes, many times."

"Then I'll tell you again. There was this one-eyed ..."

He had found himself a lady friend. They met at the supermarket. Both of them were recently widowed and they talked about their loneliness. She walked with a cane and at the time he walked unassisted. He helped carry her bags to her car and ... that was eight years ago.

Now they both used walkers.

"I'll race you from here to the lamppost," he said as we left the restaurant. "The first one there gets to rest."

"Pop," Fran said. "You're supposed to slow down."

"Yeah, yeah. My twilight years." He raised a fist while holding tight to the walker with his other hand. Breathing as deeply as possible, he shouted, "To hell with twilight!"

Copyright 2002 by Wayne Scheer

HOME | Contributors | Archives | Contact | Guidelines