Sing the Tune Without the Words

(10 weeks)

MONDAY.

Tony stops by for coffee.

“I broke the one-thousand-friend mark on Facebook today,” he says. “That’s over three times the population of the high school I went to. Do you know how popular the teenage me would have thought the adult me was?”

“Do you feel popular?”

“Not really,” he says dejectedly. “Out of that thousand, probably not one would pick me up at the airport or help me move.”

TUESDAY.

Nostalgic for the past, I take my yearbook off the shelf and page through it.To complement my wallowing, I head to a Dunkin’ Donuts to read while eating Munchkins.

I study my photo. So fresh faced. Favourite quote: “Ain’t no thing but a chicken wing.” Ah, the wing of the chicken! Like my own hopes, it was the thing that once had feathers.

I get up to order more Munchkins and leave my high school yearbook in the booth. With any luck, it’ll have been stolen by the time I get back, and I’ll be able to dine without a lump in my throat.

THURSDAY.

Marie-Claude and Helen stop by. Helen offers me some gum. It’s green.

“In my day, green meant spearmint,” I say. “Now it can mean anything from ‘extra cool granny smith apple’ to ‘outrageously sour lime.’ To assure people my age that we don’t have to fear cardiac arrest after a few chews, Trident now advertises its peppermint flavour as being ‘less intense’!”

Helen inches away.

“You’re becoming an old crank,” Marie-Claude says.

“Like Walt Whitman,” I say defensively, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”

s“But unlike Walt Whitman—you’re not Walt Whitman.”