News Stories #4: Third Places
Where do you go when there’s nowhere to go?
I hate old people, see? Yeah, I know I’m old too. I get it. But I hate old people. So you ask me why I loiter at McDonald’s instead of at the senior center, then that’s my answer. Sure, Vinnie and Carlos are older than dirt and more days than not, they’re the only ones I talk to when I come to McDonald’s for my free senior coffee. Well, sometimes I talk to Lotte too, but she’s been feeling poorly so she ain’t been around all that much lately. Anyway, that ain’t the point. It’s not who I talk to. Hell, a lot of days I’d be just as happy being a fly on the wall rather than talking to those old geezers anyway. All they do is repeat the same tired stories time after time anyway. Johnny’s the worst that way. Hell, he’ll repeat the same story three times in the same afternoon if you let’em.
But yeah, I could be a fly on the wall if I could. I don’t need to talk to no one and I don’t mean to bother no one either. Hell yeah, those young bucks with their sagging paints annoy the hell out of me. The young mothers — the way they let their snot nosed kids run wild — Yeah, it bugs the hell out of me too. The way they go out in public in their PJs and slippers… Have you ever heard of such a thing? But at McDonald’s I get to see’em and get to get pissed off at’em you know? Beats the hell out of just seein’em on the evening news when they kill someone or steal a car or hurt those same snot nosed kids. I like to think it’s part of what keeps me young — well, alive at least.
It does get old just talking to Rocky and Pedro all the time too. Rocky’s my Boston Terrier and smart as a whip. Pedro’s my parakeet. He was actually Myrna’s before she passed, but he’s a good old bird. Comes right over to the edge of the cage when I come into the room. I can tell what he needs just by how he’s chirping. He’s got one for when he needs seed and another when he wants to take a bath. Myrna used to tell me that shit and I never believed her. Well I’ll be damned if it’s not the truth now and I owe her an apology someday.
So yeah, it kinda hurt my feelings when that chicken shit manager had the cops run us off without ever talking to us first. I’d like to ring that little scrawny bastard’s neck. Don’t know where the hell I’m gonna go now. Guess Rocky and Pedro better get used to more of my company whether they like it or not. I tell ya what: This growing old is bull shit.
Glenn B Miller
