(I almost cannot believe it's been MONTHS since I last entered here; wouldn't blame anyone for not dropping by if that's the best I can seem to do. Well, I'll TRY to do better, that's all!)
I was 11 or 12, riding a bicycle and in the summer, one of my uncles asked if I wanted a job in his little grocery store. Sure. I could earn $1 AN HOUR!
His grocery store was in a poorer section of town, older residents, not much activity. His store didn't have many active customers either, so he tried to thrive by taking orders on the phone and having me deliver. Sometimes, if he didn't have an item, I'd bike a few blocks to the bigger supermarket, buy it there and then he'd tack on an extra charge when I delivered it to the customer. If I helped myself to a soda pop from his box, he'd charge me for it (I don't/didn't blame him for that.)
One day he was cleaning behind the counter and using ammonia and offered me a sniff, which I took. Damn near took off the top of my head.
Anyway, there wasn't much business and he couldn't afford to keep me on. I think he sold out a while later.
Skip to many years later, a few years ago: he was dying of Parkinson's. In a hospital bed, and I went to visit; his wife and her twin sister were there too. He had been getting by with medicines, but now they had let him down. I didn't stay long, and when I got up to leave, he beckoned me over to his bedside, looked me in the eye and started to talk. I couldn't understand a word. Totally embarrassing, so I smiled and patted his head and said something, probably equally unintelligible, and left. Never saw him again, because he died a while later.
Mortality and disease suck. Nobody told me that would be what Life was about when I started, or I would (I think) have paid a lot more attention to EVERYTHING!
