The Old Specter

The Old Specter
By: Kell Myers


  The first time I felt old was when I was twenty nine, right before I turned thirty. Turning thirty didn’t make me feel old at all, maybe because I already felt that way? I looked at my watch one night and noticed it had slipped past midnight and into my birthday. My response was Well fuck. I’m thirty. I had felt worse when Futurama was constantly pre-empted by football games going into overtime. No, what made me feel old was one of those innocuous little things in life that no one can see coming like some new disease fresh from Asia. Boom! You got it.
  It happened when I was buying some beer at a local convenience store on a sunny and warm Saturday afternoon. When I gave the girl at the register, who was very cute by the way, my money we had one of those little conversations that occur when those who work in customer service are forced to interact with people they otherwise would never speak to. I can’t remember the exact words but the gist of it was how she preferred harder drinks to beer. She told me exactly what she liked to drink at parties and get-togethers.  Does that sound strange? Well, it shouldn’t.
  This was a conversation I have had with a number of people over the years. It’s more or less the same thing I’ve heard and said in checkout lines throughout my adult and semi-adult life. It was how it was said though that bugged me.
  She didn’t address me as an equal. She did it as would a child trying to please an adult. Like when cousin Johnnie comes home from boot camp and little Mikey who is all of eight years old all of a sudden starts cleaning his room and making his bed like a good Marine. I have a cousin who is about six who looks up to me in this way but it doesn’t make me feel old, but as I said this was different. I would have done this chick. She is legal by the way I’m not that much of an asshole. Someone who is an adult was trying to please me like that meant that I was more than an adult. To commemorate this life altering epiphany I will give this a name befitting its immense scope: adult plus.
  It was a very surreal moment for me. I really didn’t understand what I was feeling for a couple of hours afterward. During that time I did quite a bit of soul searching trying to pin down the meaning of exactly how I felt. I felt old. I asked the girl out. She said no and later I felt creepy about even asking her. I was ten years older than she was after all and despite how it sounds from what you have read so far, I truly forget my age most of the time. I had to be told by someone else.
  A strange event resulting from this little encounter happened on another Saturday afternoon. This one happened to be cloudy and cold. It was late Fall. I suppose the life force of beers that I had sacrifice to the god of sanity barely hanging on by fingernails summoned him.
  When he rang the doorbell to my apartment, which contrary to most struggling writers was quite nice, I answered the door without a second thought. Silly me.
  “Hello,” said the voice coming from the pile of old newspapers. He was shaped like the top three points of a star growing from a mound of things someone forgot to recycle.  These old newspapers weren’t the ones that you usually see that are a couple of days/weeks out of date mind you but really old ones. Old as in half the people who read them are taking dirt naps or worse; sitting on display in the produce section at your local nursing home. The pages were the yellowed color of old dust and the font of the typing had that pre-modern off look to it that screamed last generation. These are the ones you find in your grandparent’s basement that told them about how Johnson wasn’t going to seek a second term or how long the lines at the gas pumps were.
  “What?” was my response in all its brilliance.
  “HELLO!” he, I guess it was a he. He sounded like a guy anyway, nearly yelled. “ISTHIS LOUD ENOUGH FOR YOU?” this was accompanied by exaggerated hand and arm gestures that mocked sign language. Fucking smart ass.
    I asked him in a much less condensed version than here “Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here? Do you want a beer? And some other question I forgot,” No reason to bore you with pointless dialogue.
  The pile of newspapers basically told me that he was the Old Specter. Not as in a specter that’s old but as in the specter of the old. He only stopped by because I felt old in a real way and not in one of those I can’t believe Star Wars is twenty years old ways. His purpose was mostly to rub it in. He didn’t want a beer.
  “Yep, I’m just here to remind you you’re old now.”
  “I kind of figured that out on my own a couple of weeks back.”
  “I know.” he replied before turning around to leave.
  “Hey! Aren’t you supposed to tell me some deep dark secret of life or answer some burning question that I might have, or…………..something.”
  “Nope, have a nice day. Oh, by the way, I know you asked that girl out.”
  “So.” Another witty retort.
  “You knew she was going to say no, so why did you even ask in the first place? You must really like pain. Why don’t you just bite the bullet? Chains, whips, leather, and handcuffs aren’t all that expensive. It will get you where you’re headed quicker.”
  This really sucked! Sucked bad! Real bad! Really, really bad! The bastard just waddled off down the sidewalk of my place without a care in the world. If he can piss off just one person all day, the day’s been worth it. That’s one hell of a motto. And to make matters worse he started to whistle the theme to Andy Griffith. It was the last straw.
  The beer bottle impacted squarely on the back of his pointy little head with a heartening smack and thud sound. It felt so good as the brown glass flew from my hand and spun end over end and connect perfectly with that son of a bitch’s paper skull or whatever. The Old Specter fell flat on his face, if a wad of newspapers can really have a face that is. He lay stunned using his stumpy little arms to cradle the back of his head. From the coffee table in my living room I took a handful of the many handfuls of match books I swipe from work every now and then. I struck them one by one catching my little tormentor ablaze. The old dry news paper burned like the flowery description that its true nature implied. At this point I dropped all the matches I didn’t have a chance to strike on the flaming son of a bitch.
  As I watched him burn I had an oddly empty feeling. Like most people, petty acts of vengeance usually make me feel better but this time I had no joy in it. I think it’s probably because he didn’t sound concerned. I mean he was obviously concerned about his immediate situation; spazzing around on the side walk screaming Oh God please help me! , Why? , It wasn’t my fault! It burns blah, blah, blah. In the end I knew he wouldn’t die. Old newspapers are everywhere and soon he would find a new stack and tell some other poor sod that they were old.
  Well fuck, I’m thirty.
 

The End