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Listen to Merlyn’s story as you read it (below).
Merlyn, at 77, believed in maintaining standards. This included driving a car that was clean, speaking in complete sentences that can be easily diagrammed correctly, and approaching every mundane task with the seriousness it deserved.
Even getting his morning cappuccino was a disciplined affair. Last week, for instance, he pulled his sedan up to the coffee drive-thru kiosk — a small, brightly colored hut — and waited for the window to slide open.
“One large cappuccino, sir?” the cheerful voice asked.
“Indeed. Thank you,” Merlyn replied, reaching into his inner jacket pocket for his wallet, which he preferred to keep organized and secure.
The young man at the window, whose name tag read JAYCE, slid the debit machine toward him. Merlyn fumbled, his fingers stiff. The leather wallet, a thick heirloom containing exactly four neatly stacked cards and three twenty-dollar bills, slipped.
His wallet didn’t fall inside the car where it could be retrieved with dignity; it tumbled, in slow motion, out of the window and landed in the small, mulched flowerbed bordering the kiosk.
Merlyn’s face flushed hot. This was not dignified.
He leaned slightly out the window, trying to hook the strap of the wallet with the tip of his umbrella — a useless tool for this task but the only long object within his reach. Jayce watched with a polite, if slightly amused, expression.
“Perhaps I can just step out,” Merlyn muttered to himself, abandoning the umbrella.
The problem was, he was parked just inches from the curb of the flowerbed. To step out, he would have to fold his walker-like body sideways. Instead, he decided the fastest and least embarrassing route was simply to lean further.
He stretched his torso, twisting awkwardly through the door’s window. He was just a fingertip away from his leather wallet, but the belt buckle on his trousers caught sharply on the window frame.
He pushed, he strained, and then, suddenly, his stomach was wedged in the driver’s side window, leaving his upper body dangling precariously above the mulch. He was utterly, completely stuck.
From this new, humiliating vantage point, he could see the car behind him — a silver minivan — whose driver was now fully engaged, holding a phone, undoubtedly recording the entire spectacle.
Merlyn felt the familiar, fiery rush of panic and shame. How did he, a man who once briefed the city council, end up looking like a panicked turtle attempting to burrow into a flowerbed?
Jayce, who had been trying to suppress his reaction, finally lost the battle. He wasn’t malicious; his smile started small, but it bloomed into a quiet, honest giggle. He covered his mouth, his eyes crinkling.
It was the genuine sound of the laughter, unedited and kind, that broke the dam of Merlyn’s serious facade. Merlyn looked at the upturned face of Jayce, then imagined the view from the silver minivan, and a wheezing sound started deep in his chest.
The sound grew until Merlyn, half-in and half-out of his car, was shaking with deep, unstoppable, uninhibited laughter. He was laughing at the absurdity of his own careful, high-stakes efforts to retrieve a wallet and at the sheer, ridiculous indignity of being physically trapped by his pride.
“Sir,” Jayce managed, wiping his eye, “Let me grab that for you.” He reached over, easily plucking the wallet from the mulch.
Merlyn took a moment, pushing himself free with a grunt. He was still chuckling, a sound he hadn’t made in public for decades. He didn’t offer an excuse. He simply took the wallet, handed over the card, and accepted his cappuccino.
As he drove away, he checked his reflection in the rear-view mirror. He had a smudge of dirt on his cheek, but his eyes were bright. The drive-thru spectacle hadn’t been an embarrassment; it had been a gift.
Merlyn was 77, and he had finally learned that the world kept spinning even when a guy named Merlyn looked ridiculous. He was, to his surprising relief, capable of being the punchline.
Also hear and read this “parent story” from 2024:
Go to “When Kyrone Tackled Risk and Naivety”
Age: Our greatest asset!
Jim Hasse, ABC, GCDF retired, author of “52 Shades of Graying”
Weekly Stories About Aging Well
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As a short man with some strength but limited by cerebral palsy, I’ve just happened to meet women with some muscle at just the right moments that were, at the time, worth some laughs.
In 1959, I accidentally fell into a waste-high waste barrel near Lime Ridge, WI, and Carrla, a hefty farm gal and fellow rural high school student, came up and lifted me out of the basket.
In 2001, Nancy, with experience delivering furniture in Manhattan, surprised our taxi cab driver on Seventh Avenue by single-handedly boosting my mobility scooter into the taxi’s trunk.
In 2,018, Judy and Georgia, tipped my mobility scooter right side up again when I missed a curb cut in Madison, WI, and flipped it over onto its side, trapping me, unhurt, between the seat and the concrete.
* When have you been caught in a ridiculous situation and ended up laughing about it at the time?