Reality And Us

Chapter Eight

An old man was standing in the streets, a curious stare emitting from his eyes as he gazed at a young boy.

The boy he looked at was sitting on the ground, he had been sitting there for a while. He looked around, almost as if he was looking for a sign, anything. It was obvious to the elder that the boy was impatient, but still, he continued to wait. For what, the old man couldn't know.

He suspected the boy to wait for someone, maybe. But why didn't that someone arrive? Did the lonely boy get stood up? The old man wondered.

He didn't have a lot to do with his time, so he stood there and waited, together with the stranger, even though said stranger didn't know.

A lot of time came along with old age, and so he usually wandered through the streets, to spend his time seeing all kinds of people. What had caught his attention was, that he had been at this street twice that day, and he had already seen the boy sitting there the first time - so he decided he wanted to see what this boy waited so long for.

He could spot him looking at his watch, for the nth time that day. Why'd the boy wait so long if clearly his patience wasn't exactly good. What made him wait so long?

The elder had already seen a lot of people in his life, had seen them do a lot of different things, in different situations. He loved the way you could gain experience just by watching people, loved the way he still could see there were a lot of things his mind couldn't grasp that simply.

Sometimes, youth was dumb, unpredictable and unreliable. Sometimes they simply refused to learn, to see, to hear.

Sometimes they knew things and understood them so easily, riddles people his age could never solve were just to simple for them.

It baffled him, how sometimes, age was a gift to wisdom, and sometimes, its biggest threat.

He wondered again, what the boy was doing there. If he asked the young lady who was carrying shopping bags, passing by just in front of him, she might have be able to tell him what the stranger was doing there, she might've understood, finding it just to simple to give an answer.

He himself couldn't think of a reason why a young person, who still had the energy of youth running through their veins might sit there and wait, for an hour or two or more.

Especially the place the boy was sitting at - he looked like someone who would've loved to go to the gym right behind him, yet he spend his afternoon sitting there dully, a frown making his face look unfriendly.

Yes, the boy started to become really unhappy, you could see it fairly well. Whatever he was waiting for, wasting his time on, was simply not happening and it really didn't seem to please him.

Which confused the old man even more - why wasn't he just leaving, why did he continue on wasting the precious time of his youth on doing nothing at all?

The boy should spend his time more wisely, time ought to be cherished, the old man shook his head, silently judging the stranger. He knew he had no right to do so, he couldn't even understand what the other was doing, but still, it happened.

He continued to wait with the boy, the more time passed the more his curiosity grew. But still, nothing.

None of the other people on the street seemed to have noticed the boy waiting for so long.

There was a woman, maybe around forty, quite small and with short black hair, who was dragging a toddler - her son, probably - who was protesting vehemently. Another child, around seven was walking next to them, he was probably her son as well. They were to busy dealing with the little one, they couldn't have noticed the boy.