Once: Timing and Regret
Once, I laughed at a man with Parkinson’s disease.
It was mid-summer, and I was seventeen. My friends and I were working in an old factory building next to the Erie Canal, unmolding serving platters and pieces of fruit that had been made of poured clay. The production area where we worked had a small, open discount showroom that sold Seconds, which were slightly damaged items that couldn’t be sold elsewhere.
For one reason or another our boss had left for the afternoon, so it was just us, four seventeen year olds with a small stash of pot, a few half-packs of cigarettes, and an old cassette player, covered in clay and silt, that was blasting music.
Shortly after our boss left, as we were prone to do, we took a smoke break. In one of the large doorways that opened out toward the canal we sat down, packed an old, metal bowl, the kind that had a ceramic bud chamber in the middle, complained about the heat, and smoked until our eyes were heavy and we were distracted by the vibrations of our own breathing.
Not long after we started settling back into work, an elderly couple entered from the hallway. This was a bit unusual. Customers didn’t often just walk into the warehouse like this, so we were all quite taken aback by it.
The woman, who was short and elderly, took two decisive steps into the showroom area and began speaking. She was sharp and lively. She spoke quickly and clearly. Her husband, though, who was trailing behind her, he was strange. I had never seen anything like him before and, in the state I was in, felt slightly terrified by him.
His tall, lanky body swayed back and forth in different directions. His shoulders moved to the left, while his head and hips moved to the right. His hips moved to the right while his hands and knees moved to the left. He quivered and stumbled. He bobbed up and down. He swung this way and that in a strange discombobulated rhythm. And he didn’t speak.
He just fumbled with the clay platters we had made, picking them up and trying to hold them still in front of his face so that he could see them.
While the woman was talking to one of my friends about the price of a particular platter, I found myself staring at this strange man and falling into something of a trance. His bizarre movements seemed to be connected to the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song that was pumping out of the radio, pulsing through my body and filling me with multitudes of sensations.
When the mixed, somber voices of Crosby, Stills, and Nash began to sing, Guinnevere … had green eyes, I looked at the man’s face. There was no expression, just a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, and a determination in his eyes, which swung back and forth, back and forth, trying to focus on the ceramic platter that his hands shuffled across his body from left to right and right to left.
I was mortified. Here, standing just across the room from me was a real life version of the Kit Cat Moving Eye and Tail Clock. I didn’t know how to respond. And then there were three men singing: Guinnevere … had green eyes. Like yours … lady like yours.
The first chuckle came out of nowhere. I tried to suppress it, but it burst out of my nose and mouth. I snorted. It wasn’t loud enough for the man and woman to notice, but it was loud enough to catch the attention of my friends, who then began to giggle.
I looked down and tried to get ahold of myself, but that feeling of suppressed laughter tickled my body. It poked me in the ribs, dug at the corners of my mouth, and filled my stomach with butterflies. I looked back over at the man, his eyes still swinging from left to right across his face, his body still contorting like nothing I had ever seen before, and then I lost it.
This is captivating-ly sad! But you couldn't have known.
Great writing man. I really love this story. I moved my body according to your description while I read along, and yeah, I've seen that before as well.
This kind of job. This kind of thing. One couldn't make it up if one tried.
17 smoke break lol