Life Is Fair

So I go out for breakfast today. I ordered two braised eggs – don’t ask – with sourdough toast and coffee. And I’m sitting there putting ketchup on my eggs when three young girls walk in. These girls are probably late teens. Anyway, they are all wearing shorts – and I mean SHORTS – and sandals. I’m a leg guy so I can’t tell you what kinds of tops they had on, to me it’s irrelevant.

They sit down at a booth right across the aisle from me. Two girls sit on one side of the booth and one sits, by herself, on the other. And I am trying really hard not to look. And I try really hard to look and not look like I’m not looking. These girls are young and they are attractive. And not single one of them is blond. Yay! I really don’t like blonds. I don’t know why. Genetics?

Anyway, I’m not a typical guy by any means. I’m an anti-social curmudgeon – and rather proud of it. But at that moment in time, I was feeling like the most sociable guy who ever lived. I mean I was absolutely brimming with sociability – literally dripping with it.

Anyway, it suddenly it occurred to me that I look about as attractive to them as a fly-covered carcass of a opossum lying along side of the road after being smashed by a tractor-trailer. I think, if they knew what I was thinking they’d being thinking, “Eeewwww – what a creeper! Gross,dirty old man!” Not dissuaded, I kept looking — over the top of my USA Today — at the girl sitting by herself on the one side of the booth – the sprawler. She was leaning up against the wall, sitting sideways, with her long, bare legs sprawled out all the way across the seat. Man oh Man! I could hardly read the paper — my hands were trembling and my heart was racing and my eyeballs were bugging…and…and…and…

Life plays really dirty (no pun intended) tricks on you as you age. In my mind, I’m twenty. My body feels like I’m forty, but sometimes like I’m seventy or eighty, depending on depending on the day. It’s really not fair. Life is not fair. To these ravenous, young beauties I look like a withered-up hump who slinked in from the old folks’ home. If life was fair these girls would look too young for an old guy like me, and I’d be dipping my yuppie toast into my eggs and thinking about a large smallmouth bass biting on my fly (now you know what I mean) or playing golf or reading AARP magazine and snoozing in my Lazy Boy. But they don’t look too young, they look great. They look more than great.

They look… Oh! Life is just not fair.

If I’d have been, let’s say 22, I’d have sashayed up to them, with confident arrogance dripping off of me, and offered to buy them breakfast. And I probably would have have been so bold as to have plopped my firm, young butt down next to the one who was sprawled out so … so… “invitingly”. I might have succeeded too – if only I were twenty-two.

But I’m not 22, I’m 62 and sadly I was invisible to them. Which, I guess, is a good thing.

Anyway, it dawned on me I am not 22 — nor am I fabulously wealthy, which is the same as being 22 – so I had to be satisfied with sly, furtive glances – using USA Today as a creeper-shield. I am a very resourceful and creative guy, and I do have some class left, though anyone who knew me would tell you I never had any to begin with. So I sat there, sneaking surreptitious glances, like an adolescent boy sneaking a peek at his old man’s “Playboy” – or in my youth, “National Geographic”. If you’re younger than 40 you won’t understand that.

I thought about what would happen if I would have walked over to those hot young things and plopped my old, wrinkled butt down next to the one whose legs reached from here to Chicago, and offered to buy them all breakfast – ah yes… especially the sprawler. But my intelligent, mature, reason prevailed, I guess, because I came to the conclusion it would have been a dangerous and wildly crazy thing to do.

I’m nuts but not that nuts.

Back in the day, when I was twenty-two, there were no cell phones. But there are cellphones now, and almost everyone has one. I’d bet my life that those three had cell phones – probably Droids or iPhones – and I’m sure they’d have used them to call the cops had I creeperized them. And I’m sure my picture would have been in my local newspaper and probably on some predators’ list and what little is left of my life would be ruined for almost nothing. But I death closes in each day I’m alive anyway, so I was tempted. Go out with a band and that sort of thing. But I’m not quite that brave.

And…

Life is really not fair. I am a creeper. I might be considered by some to be a dirty old man. But I suppose I was invisible to those young girls. They didn’t even know I was sitting there. I was just an an old lump of wrinkled flesh and a bulging paunch – but like most other old lumps I still have a young man’s libido – yes, the libido of a 22 year-old burns inside this old lump and if that offends you…too bad.

So, I ate my eggs in frustration – slamming my yuppie sourdough toast into those ketchup-soaked, runny yokes – taking my frustration out on those poor unborn chickens. Life isn’t fair. I tortured myself one last time. My eyes took a long, drink of the sprawler and I let out an almost audible sigh.

Yes, I’m disgusting. So what?

I finished my coffee, and the waitress asked if I wanted more; I said “no, thanks”. The waitress was about 60. I looked at her – then looked at the girls, and it occurred to me then that maybe life is fair. And I smiled — and this time not a leering one.

When I started thinking about it, I realized life is fair… in about 5 minutes those voluptuous yummy, young girls are going to be my age, and at least two of them will fatten up nicely, probably not the sprawler though. The sprawler looks like the type that will marry money and go for the botox treatments, and wear shorts even when her legs are old, bumpy and full of those disgusting veins. She’ll be the kind that will wear sandals and flip-flops even when her toenails the ones on the toenail fungus medicine commercials. Right now those laughing, conceited, beautiful young things think they’ll always be young and hot! But I know that in about five minutes they’ll be as invisible to those young, hot studs with six-packs, as I was to them right now.

I sneered with delight and chortled with satisfaction.

I folded my USA Today newspaper carefully — and slowly – while sneaking in a few last lascivious glances at those lovely young girls. I savored the experience this morning like one who savors that last bite of hot apple pie – that pie that tastes even better because the doctor said you can’t have it.

I lifted my aging,, wrinkled carcass from the booth and looked the sprawler in the eye. She quickly looked away as if I were a grotesque escapee from a leper colony.

But I was grinning as I walked out.

Life really is fair after all – it just takes a little time for things to even out.