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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