the difference

and then he said he’d had cancer and chemo and the whole thing and i said oh, you don’t have to tell me about it and he said oh, i WILL tell you ALL about it and we kept walking and i just mostly checked out because i lived already twenty five years with my mother’s cancer and i don’t intend to spend twenty five seconds listening to a stranger’s version of it, dispassionate as that may sound, and we walked along until we ran into someone i hadn’t seen in a long time. so on the one side is this old guy who is interested in a bunch of things i’m not and on the other side is this young guy who knows a bunch of other young guys i adore and it’s not a competition and i don’t want to offend the old guy by talking to my other friend too long, but the conversation is going on and including him and fun and i’m noticing the differences in the way the skin hangs on each of these faces and wondering how mine might be hanging today and noticing maybe that guy has dentures even if it is a nice smile and we are all dripping sweat, even those of us who weren’t just running because georgia in the summertime is a sweltering stew and suddenly the old guy just takes off running and i’m standing there. the first thing i wonder is what is wrong with me, as if the suddenness of his departure carried with it all the things that were wrong with him. so i walk in the opposite direction talking in circles of wonderment at what just happened and finally my friend said: well, it’s over now. and that’s it exactly. the difference is in someone who’s gonna tell you all about something you don’t want to know in the first place, like how in winter the chickens on the outside of the trucks on the way to be slaughtered freeze and the ones in the middle suffocate but he’s not a vegetarian anymore because of the spiritual evolution of his near death experience and someone who can just say: well, it’s over now and keep throwing the ball for his dog under a hot sky that’s still blue even though it’s waiting for rain.