In front of us, on the way to work, was a red pick-up truck. You can learn a lot about a truck by its decals and bumper stickers. For instance, one said in large letters,
MARILYN MANSON
...and another decal also pretty much spoke for itself:
I'M SO GOTHIC I'M DEAD!
Hanging from the rear view mirror, where some people put crosses and Stars of David and St. Christopher medals, was hanging a small skeleton.
So one would expect the driver to look like a cross between Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Alice Cooper at his most creepy, right? A young guy, self-obsessed with the "goth" stereotype as to almost become a charactiture of such...right?
Wrong, wrong, WRONG!
Instead, looking from the back, he was bald with silver hair and wrinkly hands.
Was there any chance the driver was the same person who put the decals on? Nyaaaah. So I ran through conjectures...
His car's in the shop, so he's driving his son or daughter's car.
He's an elderly car thief.
He lost a bet.
Such obvious paradoxes bring out the Sherlock Holmes in all of us, with conjecture after conjecture....
The ON DISPLAY web ring's September collab topic is "outward appearances". How fitting.
I wanted to stop the truck, and ask the obvious questions. How could one appearance go with the other? There is nothing keeping an old man from considering himself "Goth",or being a Marilyn Manson fan. (There were a couple of decals I didn't recognize---one said NIN with the final "N" reversed.) Yet I would have laid money that was not the case---just on his appearance.
Granted, I don't appear, at first glance, to love Staind music videos and such, but anyone can have a few things that shows the inner child is just ready to be let loose..
Yet everything was against this guy. His appearance was totally at odds with what he was driving.
Other, creepier conjectures started to crowd out the others....
Maybe this was the young kid who so obviously owned this pick-up truck, changed mysteriously into an old man!
Rod Serling stepped out of a corner of my mind and said,
"Observe David Hallam. An ordinary man, perhaps, in the twilight of his years. His hands ache from archritis, his teeth are falling out, he has liver spots. The top of his head is without hair, yet hair keeps sprouting out of unexpected other spots, and wrinkles show the experience of perhaps some seventy years...
"There's only one problem. David Hallam is twenty-two years old.
"Welcome to the Twilight (Years) Zone..."
A lot of people searched for a real immortality serum, a way to be young forever. Ponce De Leon heard of the fabled Fountain of Youth and wasted years searching for it. Genghis Khan, towards the end of his life, searched for the secret of immortality, and didn't find it....thank goodness. Who wants a murderous barbarian to stick around forever? Alchemist after alchemist searched for it, as well as the first epic hero, Gilmagesh.
Jogger after jogger is convinced running will add years to their lives---and they're right, possibly, but only a few. Slowly, oh so slowly, medical science is letting us live longer and longer, stay healthier and healthier the longer we live...
Yet it's not enough. I don't want to grow old. I've gotten used to the idea that I'll die, but I don't want to become old, deaf, my eyesight still worsening, infirm, possibly senile....
I suppose it's better than the alternative, but I'm hoping some smart boomer will design a way for us to live forever, just when I really need it.
What can I say? I'm an optimist.