They called it the--what was it--the Grandma and Grandpa Centre? Kid, they shoved you in an old folks home to live out your last days, the same one they stuck your Great Nan in, ok and it wasn't one of those crooked ones where they swap your vicodin for coco-pops, but shit aren't you even a little peeved by this? Oh wait, let me guess you're one of those brave selfless ones, not because you're some little angel but because you don't know any better?
The ladies generally don't go for progeriatrics; best you might be able to do is a 5-6 midget, but you better have a hell of a sense of humour on you, and a salamiload of that so called confidence they crave so bad, because just because they're rotting corpse spirits doesn't mean their ridiculous standards have waned even a little bit. It's all relative man.
* * *
Your dad was an asshole, admit it. He called you Widget the World Watcher to your face because he thought you didn't get the reference. He'd take you to the mall on weekends, lose the ring, and get women to feel sorry for him. Remember the panties in the back seat? The station wagon reeked like sex most days and your mum would pretend not to notice. She had your dad's brother a whole bunch anyway.
And he'd get you shitty presents on your birthdays and christmases, remember those? A wooden baseball bat like you were back hitting for the Cleveland Naps, that shit you could hardly lift while you almost lost your head to his clumsy hesistation pitch. That black eye, where they were tossing over whether you'd have to lose it. Not exactly an accident.
And that dog, remember that dog? Could have bit your arms off with its eyelids. Your old man would tie it up in the front yard in proximity to that bee hive, throw a couple of rocks at it on the way to work to keep you away from the sidewalk to keep the neighbours from knowing like they didn't already, and so all you had was inside with boring old mum going out of her brains or the backyard with its mosquito infestation and overflowing septic water. And you still managed to make a killing with your Hardy Boy's knock-off that you knocked up on a broken Olivetti. Yeah you had talent kid, but don't think you're gonna be dragging in supermodels with that ephemeral clout.
* * *
It was on your twelfth birthday that your dad threw that little family meeting. Telling them all that you were on your way down, and at this point it would easier for everybody if you accepted the fact that you would better with those who shared your physiological condition. Not progeria per se, just oldness.
And so your old man threw you in that rickety old wheelchair he never returned after your grandfather's botched galbladder operation (it had stains), and as he wheeled you up that little ramp he said over your shoulder "Look at all the lonely grandmas and grandpas here; imagine the Christmases!" and you weren't quite sure about any of it. Had you picked up that bat and given life a bit more of a go...would this be happening? Jesus, go easy.
Your parents stuck you in an old folks home. Your mother had no reservations either, remember that. She certainly didn't think of you as the worst thing that ever came out of a womb, but hell, she may have been just a little past the capability of loving at that stage. It's just that she was burnt out from the inside, your father made sure of it, and you gave her a hug at the automatic doors around her waist, and she just stared ahead.
* * *
At the time you didn't think it to be so bad, but later on you will. Just listen to a few stories about how most of us ended up here and you'll begin to know how life was unfair. The old man spit, the smells, oh god, the smells. Crusted food that nobody ever wiped away, hell even you could keep it in your mouth. Conversations with hardly a single stable mind, and you'd tried them all, and the ones who were still there were catching onto senility like a flu.
You'd convinced yourself that suntan lotion was a pain in the ass and soon you weren't going out at all anymore. Your only visitors ended up being other peoples children, and grandchildren who all look at you with the same confused eyes, and that look in their face when you said "Dad thought it would be best for me. He thought it would be right for me here." And soon they'd realised as well what they had become; selling off their parents' homes, so their kids can have that Bachelor's in Creative Writing; purposely keeping them away at Thanksgiving dinners to involve another incident of someone using the smell of that electric knife burning through turkey to shit themselves--that instant assumption that it wasn't just the dog. who Aunt Annabelle had been bloating with scraps under the table. Because of you they remembered what it was to feel bad about themselves, and soon oldies were being wheeled out of there for any imaginable occasion: Car-door Surfing from a Dog Sled Weekend; come along grandpa, when's the last time you thought you had the knees for shit like this?
Eventually you helped a good deal of them out of there for good. You set up your routine in the hallway, rocking back and forth, murmuring to yourself, and soon enough the families couldn't bare it anymore, each return more and more hell on their hearts. Then it was just you and the whole sick vegetable crew, and the nurses choking the recreation room with a haze of smoke you all hoped would speed things up a bit. In the thick of this toxic miasma there were pains in your chest and you knew what that meant. You warmed up to the nurses so that you could steal their smokes when they tucked you in; pretty sneaky for a kid who could barely lift his own arms by then. Once you had amassed an entire packet, you stayed in your room on a Friday night and tried smoking the whole lot. They always told you that you had to watch your heart, because it was so old, but even the oldest geezer can chain smoke the shit out of some Malboros and not have his heart skip a beat. What you didn't count on is that they'd probably make you sicking up all that creamed corn from lunch, or maybe with all that carbon monoxide blocking your airways you'd simply pass out before anything close to cardiac arrests sets in. Both those things happened and you still got your wish so be happy that you're here kid, but maybe if you'd gone out a little more noble you might not be stuck here courting homunculus strippers with smack addictions that technically aren't possible to carry over into the afterlife.
*Set my fucking hearings after midday and I might not be too drunk to remember shit like this.
