Short Story

We ate breakfast before Lewis' appointment with the dentist. I urged him to brush his teeth before leaving, knowing this was stupid. Maple syrup and orange juice do not care where you've been or where you are going. Good parenting is not rational.

At the diner, just a table away from us, sat two older men. One was ancient, easily in his nineties and the other man might have been in his sixties although it was difficult to tell; he never looked up from his phone. I inferred that he was the ancient man's son.

The ancient man struck up a conversation with us. He asked Lewis questions and I strained to interpret between the two of them, repeating the questions and answers from one to the other. When the ancient man discovered Lewis' name, he said: "Lewis! That's a great boxing name. In junior college, I tried boxing once..." He leaned back in his chair and glanced at the ceiling as his words trailed off.

I love one-sentence stories.

I tried boxing once.

That's the whole story. We already know how it ends. Painfully, of course! But not only because boxing is a dangerous sport, but even more so because he's still thinking about it 7 decades later. When his eyes scanned the ceiling of the diner, I wondered if he was thinking about the ceiling above the boxing ring. What went through his mind as he laid on the mat and decided, in that moment, that he would never box again?

And then, without looking up from his phone, the younger man told his Dad to stop talking to us and eat some more. I kissed Lewis on the cheek and prayed that I would never be lonely or ancient.