Attribution: Photo by Mobio Marketing on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes the keeper and Phyllis’s adjustment to accepting age-related considerations with grace and appreciation.
Those appropriate response do not arrive without some early resistance, like when the first overt offers of assistance come as implied insults that you are too old to do it yourself when in your own mind you are just a few years out of high school and it was only last week that you were doing cartwheels.
That stage of bite-your-tongue-and-accept-help is brief and then the role of decency and kindness overwhelms and you find yourself smiling at strangers who step up to open heavy doors or reach for an item on a high grocery shelf, or a low one.
It is a fine thing that is happening here. Brief pleasantries are usually exchanged and opinions formed: in the keeper’s case he concludes that being old and sometimes needing help is a positive. It is woven into the human decency that will prevail and ultimately allow the human race a few more years before the survival door is slammed in its “old” face by narcissistic oafs.
The keeper, being years older than almost everybody, including Phyllis, suggests that he is ready to accept help from all quarters and thanks everyone in advance.
