I’M WORRIED ABOUT YOU; PLEASE GO AWAY

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Man—I’M WORRIED ABOUT YOU; PLEASE GO AWAY [T, 7-15-25]

 

I recently had a very nice encounter with a man I’ll call Rick. Over ten years, we have occasionally met as we walked the narrow sidewalks of our pleasant neighborhood. Now that Heather has moved, we are the only early morning walkers.

He said, “I’ve been worried about you. I haven’t seen you for so long. I asked around about you, but…”

Asking around in our neighborhood, about anything, will usually result in, “But…”

We are good neighbors in our ‘hood. We greet one another. But if we know another’s name, it is only the first name.

I think the dogs are responsible for that. I know the names of all the dogs in the neighborhood, but they think they are celebrities, and use only one name, like Waggs or Blue, so we humans have begun to do the same, like Madonna or Lizzo. [Yes, I know who Lizzo is.]

I explained to Rick that I had not walked for several months because of my bad hip, but that I was able to walk now because of physical therapy.

Rick did what we all do in a casual conversation. He heard something that caught his attention and went with that, rather than remembering that he was supposed to be worrying about me, since he had not seen me for so long.

“My mother had to have physical therapy. She had a stroke at Thanksgiving time,” he said. He went on to describe his mother’s symptoms before and after PT. “Not surprising that she’s slow to recover,” he said, “because she’s almost 89.”

Almost 89? Guess who else is almost 89! [I thought that; didn’t say it out loud.]

I was dumbstruck. Rick is an old guy. Obviously retired. Yes, he walks better than I do. He’s faster, long loping stride. But I thought that he and I were the same age. No, his mother and I are the same age! That means he must be the same age as my children.

So now I have done it, the same as Rick, the same as we are all wont to do until we learn to listen--hearing that thing that caught my attention and took me away from the main point.

No, the main point is not that I misread his age, that I’m old enough to be his father. No, the main point is that he was worried about me. That is what I need to hear, not that I’m once again flummoxed by how old I am.

Here’s the point: It’s nice to have folks glad you’re present. And it’s nice when they notice your absence and worry about you.

I think a lot of the trouble makers in the world, nobody noticed them when they were absent, so they had to act out their frustrations in order to get attention, to get noticed. Those folks, we need to say to them, “I noticed your absence. I worried about you.”

Now, though, before we can say it, those folks will need to be absent, go away. We probably have the same folks in mind.

John Robert McFarland

My older sister used to work for a travel agency. Their business slogan was, “Please Go Away.” For cruises, it was “Please Go Aweigh.”