Happy Birthday Mr. Sidney

Chapter I

Pears

This was my second time walking to the store this week. I keep forgetting what I need by the time I get there.

I can hear Claire saying, "Write it down, honey, so you don’t forget." "I won’t forget," I would always say.

Sure enough, I would forget.

I miss her so much it seems like years without her, yet it’s only been a few months that she’s been gone. She was to me the most beautiful woman in the world. It’s amazing how alive someone can make you feel. Now I feel so incomplete without her.

Just knowing she was home or out doing errands was satisfying enough for me. I knew she would be home with me sooner or later so we could share our day. We both felt so complete with each other. I wish everyone could know how good that makes you feel.

I was about to turn seventy-two in a few weeks and wondered if anyone would even remember my birthday. Of course since Claire was no longer around, there was not much contact with our family. I just wasn’t the type to call anyone on the phone. Claire would have to take the phone and hold it up to my ear just to get me to talk.

I was just rounding the corner onto my street when I noticed the three boys that lived a few doors down from me playing in their driveway, riding bikes. I stood for a little bit to catch my breath and watch them as they played. Actually I was not too anxious to walk past them, the last time they all stopped and stared at me as I walked by.

I was trying to decide if I should cross the street and walk on the other side until I got to my house, then I could cross back over. The more I thought about that idea, the less I liked it.

Me crossing the street would require extra energy and that was something I just didn’t have a lot of, energy. I was almost seventy-two and I felt more like ninety-two. This old body just didn’t care to move like it used to a year ago. In fact there were a lot of things I just didn’t care to do at all anymore.

I started to walk again, thinking, maybe the boys would ignore me as I passed them this time.

The boys seemed to be enjoying themselves as they rode around in circles and up and down the driveway. They must have been between ten and fourteen years old. As I got closer to them I wondered whatever happened to my old bike. "I bet that would be worth a lot of money now," I said to myself.

The younger one heard me as I walked past the driveway and he came real close to hitting me. I had to move out of the way as best as I could and I almost fell. The two younger boys started laughing at me.

"Dumb old man," they said.

The third boy stopped at the back of the driveway.

"Hey you guys be careful, you could a hurt that old man," he yelled.

I’m not sure I appreciated his compassion since his tone was a little harsh. As I straightened myself up the one boy that almost hit me said, "Stupid old man!"

I guess I deserved it. He probably thought I was strange talking to myself.

I can remember when I was young my friend Dennis picked up a pear that had fallen from a tree and threw it at an old man walking across the street. It was a wide street and he was proving how far he could throw, he told me he could hit that old man.

He did it all right! Dennis hit him right in the shoulder. At the same time that old man stopped and rubbed his shoulder in pain. It was mean. I remember laughing, but at the same time thinking how wrong it was that we did that.

Who knows why certain images and memories stay with you after all these years? I hadn’t even thought about that until this moment.

As I walked away from the boys I could hear them laughing and wondered if I was going to be hit in the shoulder with a pear or by some other type of fruit. I thought if I was, I would turn around and see an old man standing there or a young Dennis with the boys in the driveway saying, "Told you I could hit him!"

I could see my house now and was thinking I was almost home where I felt safe.

As I approached my next-door neighbors I noticed a "FOR SALE" sign on her front yard. "I sure don’t remember that before I went to the store." I looked around to see if anyone saw me talking to myself.

Old Mrs. Jordan was our nosy neighbor who had moved out to go live with her son and his family. I feared her more than the boys down the street.

Nosy old Mrs. Jordan would come running outside. I say old, but she was actually younger than I was. As far as I was concerned she was old. She not only looked old she sounded old.

Mrs. Jordan would come running out of her house as if she was looking out the door waiting for me to go by. She stood about 4’10" and must have weighed about seventy-five pounds and would always wear one of those awful flowered housedresses that just hung on the shoulders.

I used to joke with Claire that the woman was just skin and bones and nosy. Claire in her usual manner would always say, "Stuart. She’s just lonely."

"She’s just nosy." I would say.

Since Claire was gone she felt it her duty to check up on me. Which wasn’t so bad, but it was every time I walked out of the house!

If I had the front curtains open in the house and she could see me, she would run up and knock on the door. For that reason those curtains stayed shut.

She seemed like a vulture to me circling its prey and waiting to attack. I was going to start coming the other way so I didn’t have to pass her house. I was lucky she moved or I was going to start doing that.

" Hello Mr. Sidney, " she would blurt out in her high-pitched voice as she ran waving to say hello.