The Good Old Days

 After he had given the old man his COVID vaccine, the pharmacist said, "Please stay in the store for around fifteen minutes."

"Why?" the old man asked.

"Just a precaution.  Let us know if you start to feel weird."

"I'm old," the man said. "I always feel weird."

"How so?" asked the pharmacist.  

"You'll find out someday, when you wake up and feel some pain you don't understand.  And then it will happen more and more often.  Always a new pain.  And when you see a doctor he'll tell you you're doing just fine for someone your age.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard that."

"That doesn't sound good."

"And then there's the brain fog.  I usually don't know what day it is until I've had my second cup of coffee.  Hell, sometimes I have to think to remember what month it is."

"Damn!"

"Damn is right!  I can't even wear Chuck Taylor sneakers anymore because my feet are so bad.  Not enough support."

"You wore Chuck Taylor sneakers?"

"Of course I did!  Those things have been around since before I was born, if you can imagine that.  I was young once, too."

"Yes, of course."

"I liked some of the same things you like."

"Oh?" The pharmacist raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, and I don't just mean sex, if that's what you're thinking."

"No, that's not..."

"But that was on the list.  You young people these days are spoiled with all this internet porn.  When I was young we used to have to rely on magazines, and since most of us were too young, that made it more difficult."

"Uh- huh..."

"I was lucky.  My dad's Uncle Frank was something of a perv.  He had tons of those magazines.  Sometimes, on the sly, he would give me some of his older ones.  Oh sure, sometimes some of the pages were stuck together, but I didn't care.  I was happy to have them."

"I see."

"Do you?  I see you're wearing a Star Wars tie."

"Yes."

"How many Star Wars movies have there been?  A lot.  And look at all those Star Wars TV series.  Good God, how can anyone keep track of them?  I saw the first movie when it came out in 1977.  We didn't have all this stuff.  We had that movie, and some comics books and paperbacks, and the 'Star Wars Holiday Special' a year later, and that's all we had until 1980.  And we were happy to have it!"

"Yes, I guess you must have been."

"Damn right!  And we didn't have all this cable and satellite, and streaming TV!  We had an old TV with rabbit ears and sometimes the picture would fade in and out."

"Oh, sorry."

"Don't be sorry!  We were happy to have it!"

"I see."

"'And Star Trek'!  Look at all this Star Trek stuff you young people have now!  When I was young, we had one Star Trek show and then we had reruns.  For years and years, we had reruns on our old rabbit-eared TV. I'd watch it every day right after the reruns of 'Batman' and 'Get Smart.'  That's all we had.  And we were happy to have it!"

"I guess you would have been."

"And comic books.  We didn't have comic book stores back then.  We sometimes had to ride our bikes from one end of town to the other, hoping to find a newsstand or drugstore that had the latest issue of 'The Amazing Spider-Man' or 'The Incredible Hulk'!  Comics were cheap in those days, too, because they were printed on cheap, pulpy paper.  But we were happy to have it."

"Was there anything you weren't happy to have?"

'Well, yeah. When we got in trouble at school, we usually got paddled, and if our parents caught wind of it, we'd get paddled again when we got home.  Nobody was happy to have that."

"No," said the pharmacist, "I guess they wouldn't be."

"Still, it's better than what kids have now," said the old man.

"What's that?"

"School shootings."

"Yes, I have to agree with you on that," said the pharmacist.

"Well," said the old man, "I think I've been here fifteen minutes, so I'll be on my way."

"Okay, take care," said the pharmacist.

"Yup." And with that, the old man left. - Jeff Barnes