Typecasting

There's an old guy that I pass on my bike ride home from work and the gym. He's out in his lovely, picturesque, slice of Bulgaria looking front porch every evening. He is super cute, that perfect old guy you want to play chess in the park with, his round, slightly oblong bald head has some comforting wispy white hair on the sides, he's tall enough to suggest that he was once strong, yet thin enough to make his collar look endearingly big, and not skinny enough to depress you. I wave at him in the evenings, as I enjoy the soft balmy air on my supercool vintage Schwinn cruiser. I almost feel like I'm part of what goes on after the freeze frame of the "A Hundred Ways to Use Apples to Teach Values" kind of Family Circle photo essay you see in the fall.

Except the old bastard never waves back. He rejects me, which screws up the idyllic fantasy his presence evokes. At first I thought maybe he is blind, or paralyzed by a stoke, or polio, like one of those throwback victims with the metal leg braces I used to see when I was a kid. Of course I figured there must be a noble tragedy, a backstory with a lesson, that prevented his participation in my lovely Northern Idaho town in the fall musings.

Well then I saw him walking across his lawn, gardening and whatnot, and have since concluded that my Norman Rockwell neighbor is just an unfriendly old bastard who could care less if I enjoy my evening or not.

Well fuck him.
And now we are both a victim of my prejudices. I have blotted him out of my beautiful land of make-believe and this is surely his loss.