Rant No. 523 By Dave Donelson

Rant No. 523 

(randomly numbered)

By Dave Donelson

Three little words that meant so much

I stewed over them for days

Unsure whether to feel insulted or just offended.

Or reassured about the human race.

Angry, depressed, or elated?

So few words, so many feelings.

These came in the home center parking lot

From a young bearded man in a plaid shirt

Who uttered them as he stepped from his car. 

While I loaded bags of mulch into my truck,

Bags that weighed perhaps forty pounds,

Bags I had no trouble lifting and stacking.

As I had done many times before in my long life,

Always careful to lift with my legs, not my back,

Working slowly with no muscle-tearing movements.

“Need a hand?”

Said the chipper young man through his full black beard.

I wish I had such hair on my balding head.

“No thanks,” I said without thinking. “I’m good.”

He said nothing more, just turned and walked away

As I replayed the scene in my mind.

What? 

Do I look like I need a hand?

I wanted to shout at his plaid-covered back.

Did you see me struggle? Do you think I’m feeble

Because my face is wrinkled like a pale prune?

The farther he walked, the more snark I muttered.

Driving home, though, I reconsidered.

I should appreciate a young man who offers to help strangers,

A Good Samaritan out to save one old man from himself.

He didn’t know I am a perfectly capable geezer

Who throws around forty-pound sacks all the time

As if they are nothing. Just slowly to guard my back.

But enough about me. What about him?

That evening, I wondered if the young man assumes

Every old man is helpless. Old women, too, probably.

All of us with compression socks and age spots.

Even those of us without one foot in the grave

though we may peer over its edge sometimes.

Is there a word for guys like him? An -ist of some kind?

Not misogynist or racist, but bad enough.

Ah, yes, he’s a stereotyping agist.

Looks make the label

And the label defines the person—

In this case, me, as helpless.

Or maybe he is really just a nice guy. 

I guess I ought to cut him some slack. 

After all, shouldn’t I be tolerant at my age?

Dave Donelson is a freelance writer and artist with some three million words in print covering topics as diverse as the sex lives of American suburbanites and diamond smuggling in the Congo. His work has appeared over the last 25 years in dozens of national publications, and he is the author and illustrator of twenty books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and memoir. You can read all of his agebuzz posts here. Learn more at www.davedonelson.com and follow his work at substack.com/@davedonelson.