Wednesday, April 6, 2016

They Enjoy It More


Some days a random encounter will surprise and inspire. My wife was standing outside the garage yesterday when an older gentleman came walking down the street, a neighbor we'd never met in our 16 years of living here.

“The only thing I miss about Europe,” he said, “is that we don't all know each other on this street. That would never happen in Spain. I would invite you into my house for a glass of wine, or you would invite me into yours and we would talk. Nobody does that here.”

He asked us to guess his age. We said 70.

“I'm 84 and six months. I've lived in 41 countries and traveled around the world three times. I speak 11 languages. Guess where I'm walking to now?”

We had no idea.

“There is a bar,” he said, pointing to the northwest, “where many of us meet. One from France, one from Greece, one from Germany. Three times a week, we talk about nothing, stupid things.”

It sounded like a nice place.

“There is a saying in my country, 'Un paso entre la vida y la muerta.' It means, there is one step between life and death. I could go to sleep tonight and never wake up. So I have fun. I go talk to my friends at the bar.”

He said many other things in the span of a remarkably dense five minutes, all with a smile and a zest for life that I hope I have when I reach his age, assuming I do.

Maybe someday we'll invite him over for wine. Well, no, but it's a sweet thought.

I wonder what they talk about when they talk about nothing. Probably the same as the rest of us, only they enjoy it more.

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