Notes & Stuff (That Probably Won't Amount to Anything)

The Old Man in the Food Court

I sat in a mall food court in Manchester, New Hampshire once, eating the greasy bad-for-me food I'd squeaked out of my weekly paycheck. At the time, I was in college full time - though for which degree, I don't recall - and I was on a break between classes. I don't remember what time of year it was - if the mall was crowded with Christmas shoppers or simply just crowded because that's what happens in the afternoon after the working hours pass. I was writing - or maybe reading? - and wholly minding my own business at my table when I spotted the old man a couple tables away.

Like me, the old man was there for lunch. He had a tray from one of the restaurants sitting on the teal formica table before him, and a fast food cup full off that watered down fountain soda those type places overcharge for. He wasn't eating, though. Maybe he had finished, or was just lost in though, I don't know, but he had this far-off look in his eyes, half watching the crowd and half contemplating mysteries of the world unfolding in his mind.

There was something utterly fascinating to me about the old man. I don't have any idea what, even to this day. He just say there, hands folded in his lap, white hair eccentrically pouffed around his partially-bald head, wearing a Bill Cosby-esque pull over sweater and the tan Members Only jacket that probably once made him cool. He looked sad without looking sad, if you know what I mean? As though perhaps something had triggered a memory of a long lost spouse or a daughter that didn't call quite often enough to keep him company.

Whatever it was about him, I couldn't leave without a way to remember him. I just knew this man needed to be a part of a story one day. And so I snuck a picture of him in as calm and quiet a manner as I could, holding my cell phone and pretending to read a text, capturing him in the frame of an image that intrigued me for years, until I finally lost it with the breaking of an old phone.

Luckily, I have tucked the old man in my mind, and he waits there for an opportunity to tell his story.