Life Is Fair

So I go out to 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. The girls These girls are actually young ladies – but girls are girls to an older guy like me.

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 – so my friend in Georgia tells me. 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 occurred to me that I look about as attractive to them as an opossum lying along side of the road after being smashed flat by a tractor-trailer. I think, if they knew what I was thinking they’d being thinking, “Eww – what a creeper! Gross, dirty old man!” Not dissuaded, I kept on 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 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 tricks on you as you age. My mind thinks I’m twenty and my body feels like forty – and sometimes sixty or seventy – depending on what position I slept in the night before. And it’s really not fair. Life is not fair. To these lovely, ravenous, young beauties I look like a hump who crawled in from the middle ages. 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 some smallmouth bass or playing golf. But they don’t look too young, they look great. And it’s just not fair.

If I’d have been, let’s say 22, I’d have sashayed up to them, with 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 like a cute, little bunny. I might have succeeded too – if only I were twenty-two.

But I’m not 22, and I was invisible to them. Which, all things considered, is a good thing.

Anyway, it quickly 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 stupid, furtive glances – using USA Today as a creeper-shield. I can be a very resourceful and creative guy, and I do have some class, believe it or not. So I sat there, sneaking furtive glances, like an adolescent boy sneaking a peeks at his old man’s “Playboy” – or in my case “National Geographic”.

I thought about what would happen if I would have walked over to them 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 mature reason prevailed, I guess, because I came to the conclusion it would have been a dangerous and really crazy thing to do.

I’m really 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 on the Web. My life would be ruined for nothing, and …and… and…

Life is really not fair. I am a creeper. I might be considered by some to be a dirty old man. I was invisible to those young girls, I think. They didn’t even know I was sitting there. I was just an an old lump of wrinkled flesh and a 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.

Actually I felt like an old, starving hobo who’s been eating nothing but tree bark for six months, and happens to wander into town, and stares into a restaurant window watching people eating steak – and you now when all you’ve eaten for months is tree bark, even a greasy KFC Double Down looks good.

Anyway, I ate my eggs in frustration – slamming my yuppie sourdough toast into ketchup-soaked, runny yolks – taking my frustration out on those poor unborn chickens. Life isn’t fair. I tortured myself one last time. My eyes took a long, not-so-furtive glance (stare) at the sprawler and I let out an almost too-audible sigh.

I’m disgusting.

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 a real smile, i.e. not a leering one.

When I got to thinking about it, I realized that life is fair… in about 5 minutes those really pretty, young girls are going to be my age, and at least two of them will fatten up, probably not the sprawler though. The sprawler looks like the type who will marry money, and go for Botox treatments, and wear shorts even when her legs are old, veiny, and cruddy. She’ll be the kind that will wear sandals even when her toenails look like the toenails on the toenail fungus commercials. She will just coat them in RED nail polish – and cover up the fungi.

They think they’ll always be young and hot – ha! ha! In about five minutes they’ll be as invisible to those young, hot studs with six-packs, as I was to them this morning.

I chortled with delight; I sighed with satisfaction.

I folded my “USA Today” carefully while sneaking in a few more glances. I savored the experience this morning like a man who savors that last sweet bite of apple pie – that tastes even better and sweeter because some high-falutin’, pretentious doctor said I can’t have it.

I lifted my aging, wrinkly carcass from the booth and looked that sprawler right in the eye. She broke off eye contact immediately, as if I were an escapee from a leper colony in Zimbabwe.

Still, I was grinning as I walked out.

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