Pops Stories

He wondered why most people avoided him.
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He tried to always be cheerful and to trade greetings with his fellow citizens whenever he saw them.

But he guessed the sight of an old man, even though he was not quite sixty yet, walking, more like stumbling, along the sidewalks wearing dark sunglasses and constantly looking around might make people wonder.

He always carried a thick piece of dowel rod about four feet long. He carried it for several reasons.

First, he used it as a blind stick to find curbs or jutting concrete slabs to prevent accidents and to climb stairs since neither of his legs liked stairs.

Second, it helped steady his unusual gait. His hips were flaky and his leg muscles were not dependable. Many times one or the other would give out for a second and throw him to one side or the other. He used the dowel rod as a cane.

Third, the dowel rod protected him. It was hard oak and better then a baseball bat to scare off the would be muggers. Three times would be robbers had been introduced to his dowel rod.

Once he was sure he broke the robber’s wrist holding the knife.

Another time the young kid heard the rod whipping through the air at his body and he ran away cussing.

The youngster stood just out of reach waving his gun telling the old man how he was going to hurt him.

A witness said the old man just laughed and watched the kid try to run from the police his cell phone had summoned.

A taser gun found its mark and it was said the old man made fun of the kid and taunted him resulting in at least one other jolt from the taser.

The news of the incidents traveled around the neighborhood and he didn’t have any problems until early one morning when during a walk around the block a middle aged man on drugs tried to rob him.

The man delivering the morning papers witnessed the robbery. The drug user pretended to have a gun in his pocket. The old man pretended he was playing golf or baseball or break the piñata and scored a direct hit to the druggie’s privates.

When his assailant hit the ground the old man laid his dowel rod across the idiot’s throat at an angle, held one end in his hand and put his foot on the dowel rod effectively trapping the would be robber.

In court the judge asked how long the old man had held him down and the witness giggled saying he took his foot off every minute or so to kick, like he had a cramp.

When the idiot drug user got on the stand he told the judge that someone was choking him and when that pressure ended someone kicked him in the privates taking his breath away again.

The judge had to hide his laugh and then asked the idiot if he was now admitting he was at the scene. After another ten minutes and a conference with his appointed attorney he pleaded guilty and the judge sentenced him to ten years.

The old man got a warning too but it was not on the record. The judge told him where to get a really nice cane for cheap and how the handle made a nice tool to ‘hook’ a robbers private area.

He warned the old man if he tried to bring his dowel rod back into the court house he might end up in jail.

The next time the old man needed assistance it came from an unexpected source. But first some more about the old man’s life.

The old man had suffered several heart attacks, the insertion of a stent into a blocked main artery, rotator cuff surgery that put him out of commission for six months and finally open heart surgery that he could never quite recover from. All this in a five year period.

He also had exercised induced asthma, chronic bronchitis and COPD. IF he got too hot his lungs tried to shutdown. Many times he had passed out from lack of oxygen when he overheated.

It was agreed his three pack a day habit for several years had caused his breathing problems but a year after kicking the habit he still had major problems that he had not had before heart surgery.

His hardened arteries, heart problems and high cholesterol were called hereditary but the old man blamed them on his poor diet and the tobacco.

He also blamed the Type II diabetes on his life style but one doctor thought he had been diabetic for several years saying it explained his nerve damage – the doctor thought his condition had just been missed by other doctors.

The old man accepted this as part of life. But the one thing, the only thing that scared him became a reality a year after they cracked his chest.

He started losing his sight. His left eye had been troublesome for many years. At first his doctor could not explain it but he finally decided that the old man’s shingles were causing the problem.

Whenever he had an extensive outbreak of shingles, the sight in his left eye would darken to almost complete blindness and he had an intense disabling pain behind his left eye.

His right eye kept him functional and he had acclimated to his one-eyed condition. But a year after open heart surgery his right eye would change from day to day. He could not focus on anything some days and others he could read a license plate from a block away.

His doctor suggested it was his diabetes. The old man remembered when he first started his diabetes medicine and made changes his diet. He had to get two different prescriptions for glasses in as many months as his body chemistry changed.

When the doctor finally changed his daily regimen to insulin, first slow acting then adding quick acting his vision became even more undependable.

It finally got to the point that he was no longer able to drive. After several months of depending upon his daughter for bi-weekly grocery shopping and the bus system for getting to other appointments he got on the wrong bus at the transfer point and ended up a few blocks from home. He could read the street signs but he did not recognize the street names or know exactly where he was at. Cell phone calls to his daughter and son did not help.

He finally came across another person on the sidewalk that was able to point him in the right direction.

He started taking daily walks around the block to hone his ability to recognize his surroundings and try to prevent getting lost again.

Winter was coming. As long as he rode the right buses he would be dropped off right across the street from his cheap upstairs apartment but sometimes his destinations were a few blocks from the bus stop. He had to be able to maneuver without getting lost.

His walks were an escape of sorts from the prison his apartment had become. And he hoped that he would be able to make his body function better with exercise and possibly relieve some of his health issues.

For several months he had only left his apartment when his daughter took him for groceries – some times she did the grocery shopping when he was unable to do it himself. Then it would be a month that he did not leave his apartment.

Usually he could be found in front of his computer – one monitor running the screen magnifier to help him ‘see’ the other screen where he read some websites and wrote stories.

He also had a screen reader program that would ‘read’ whatever he copied into it and another program that spoke what he typed letter by letter or word by word.

He had yet to find an email program that his magnifier or screen readers worked with so his communication was limited.

He had started a couple of blogs to record his stories and memories but he was still limited in his communications. He did not want his relatives to know how helpless he could be at times.

And when his joints started to ache from sitting in one place too long or the pain behind his eye or on his left side became unbearable, he would crawl into bed for short naps. He had not slept more then four hours in a row since his heart surgery.

His left leg would start to ache without warning. Extreme pain that felt like his leg was on fire. His entire left side, numb since his heart surgery, would start to wake up from being numb and drive him crazy until finally returning to its numb state.

When he touched his left side it would feel like he was touching someone else. He did not feel his own fingers.

He had to be careful as he did not feel heat or cold or someone or something touching him on the left side.

But he had adapted to his new limitations and was able to function for the most point.

Luckily he had a knack for remembering things. Like which buttons on the remotes turned on the TV and changed channels. He normally did not have the TV on since he could not see it but he did ‘listen’ to the audio portion through his surround sound.

He had found a website listing the TV schedules and was able to ‘listen’ to his favorite shows. His biggest problem was knowing what day of the week it was and some times even what time it was.

He found a computer program that spoke the time every half hour or on demand. But for some reason the program kept disappearing from the lower left of his screen.

Until he could find it again he sometimes only knew the time by listening to the radio and waiting for the news.

Then he found a gadget that ran under Google desktop that was a life saver. It was an analog clock that could cover the entire screen. Using the magnifier he could ‘see’ the time. It also listed the date and day of week.

But the best part was being able to call it up with a hotkey and dismiss it with the same.

He also discovered Google reader and no longer needed to visit the websites – the reader ‘found’ the stories for him.

Then he found books indexed under Google that another old program from Microsoft could read to him. He was content but still missed communication with people.

This caused him to withdraw but he found he actually liked it. He had always hated to depend upon anyone for anything. Sometimes he would go for the two weeks between grocery runs and not say a word – even to himself.

This also suggests that no one called on the phone. That would be a good observation. He only called when absolutely necessary again not wanting to bother anyone.

It might seem odd that he had no friends but that was not always the case. In fact he was the reason none of his friends contacted him.

When he met his second wife he moved about a hundred miles away. He brought his new girlfriend, one of only three his friends had met in fifteen years, back to meet his friends and they all seem to like her.

But whenever he tried to invite people over for a weekend or to meet them at the middle point between the two towns for dinner he never got a positive response.

He concluded that these were not real friends. Only one tried to contact him the first Christmas he was gone but that person used a cell phone number that he had quit using several months prior. The old mad did not get the message until early spring and a return call ended up at a disconnected number.

He had returned to town a few times and even stopped by the old watering holes but he never ran into any of his old ‘friends’, not even the same bartenders. The old man was surprised – he had only been gone for two years but everyone seemed to have moved on.

At his current position in life he had very few occasions to meet people let alone any contact time to make friends.

He had settled into his private singularly populated world and made the best of it.

His next door neighbor had two cats and a beagle. He had made friends with the animals and had a few talks with the neighbor lady but she was busy with work and raising two girls and the animals.

On his walks he had met several people walking their dogs and had made friends with the dogs and at least exchanged pleasantries with the humans.

He even tracked time because there was one lady that if she saw him leaving she would just happen to be waiting for him as he turned the last corner. He did not like her – she was a gossip and busy body and lonely because her own personality sucked.

He knew she could not ‘meet’ him if it was after 1 PM because her mother would have retuned from therapy and needing all her attention.

Other times he simply walked a block farther and came home the way he went effectively getting to his steps before she saw him.

But otherwise he just roamed the streets. The bus route that went past his house simply made a circle to the end if the near west side then returned to the transfer point.

A bus route one block north took him to the west mall and streets with business he could use.

Two blocks north was a route that covered the entire western side of the city after dark.

And three blocks south was a route that would take him to the southern part of town if he needed to.

His objective was to become familiar with all these bus routes so that he would hopefully still have some mobility if/when he lost his vision completely.

He could still see large objects and could tell the difference between a man or woman, teen or child and animals even though he might not be able to see enough detail to identify them.

Along his many routes were many fenced front yards and what he laughingly referred to as guard dogs although most would run and hide if he acted aggressive.

Almost all of them would let him pet them after a few visits. But there were three dogs at a corner house with a fenced yard that simply did not like him.

They would bark continuously until he left their fence. He stopped and talked to them every time and after several months they would bark until he started to talk.

Then they would sit and listen but their tails were not wagging and when he continued his walk the barking started again.

Their owner had come out a few times and said no one had ever made friends with them. He didn’t know why but in a way he was glad. His home was one of the few that had not been broken into.

The neighborhood homes had been converted to multiple apartments and undesirables had taken up residence.

The neighbor watch officer had taught them how to spot drug activity and it had not taken long for most of the drug sales to stop but the users were still there and did not care what they took as long as they got their next fix.

Several neighbors had come home to empty porches and patios but no one had spied the thieves.

So the neighborhood was not as safe as it looked but keeping track of your surroundings, owning a dog and carrying a big stick seemed to keep most people safe.

During his walks he also ran into the same people working out is their yards or taking their own walks. He learned where many people lived and occasionally he would see them needing assistance with heavy bags or moving something. He always helped when possible

Many offered money as a tip for helping but he always turned them down. On the days he became disorientated just the sound of their voice told him where he was at.