Cult of Jef

I believe it was my mother who once said that she looked for­ward to old age when she no longer had to pay atten­tion behind the wheel of a car and could rely upon the quick reflexes of younger dri­vers to get out of her way. She said this after a near col­li­sion with an elderly dri­ver of a gas-guzzling Chrysler that had launched itself, momen­tar­ily air­borne, out of the park­ing lot of a Jack-in-the-Box and landed just in front of my mother’s sta­tion wagon.

Although I under­stood my mother’s point, I expressed my doubts about such a plan. First, if one is warned not to oper­ate heavy machin­ery while under the influ­ence of sinus med­ica­tion, it seems to me, then, that dri­ving a motor vehi­cle while legally blind might be a tad more prob­lem­atic. With the num­ber of younger dri­vers tex­ting, jab­ber­ing on cell phones, apply­ing makeup, and man­scap­ing with a per­sonal groomer behind the wheel, I’m not cer­tain that they will see other dri­vers at all, let alone the youth-challenged. Sec­ondly, there are enough inan­i­mate objects that geri­atric dri­vers can plow into on every road to shorten any trip to the Pic­cadilly Cafeteria.

I had largely for­got­ten this con­ver­sa­tion until years later. I had slipped away to the Bally Total Fit­ness around the cor­ner from my office for a lunchtime work­out. As I moved through my cir­cuit from one machine to another, I almost col­lided in another elderly gen­tle­man who always seemed to be tot­ter­ing in my path. Older peo­ple were quite com­mon in the slower hours at the gym. I was on a tight sched­ule, so I took a deep breath and changed the pat­tern of my work­out to per­form a dif­fer­ent exer­cise. Look­ing at this lit­tle man, hunched over the bicep curl, I hoped that I would still be able move about at his age.

By the time I fin­ished my work­out, the elderly gen­tle­man had dis­ap­peared. I dashed to the locker room with just enough time for a quick shower before I had to head back to the office. I stripped off my gym clothes and stuffed them in my locker, while grab­bing my toi­letries. Just then the elderly gen­tle­man shuf­fled from the show­ers in my direc­tion. I nod­ded at him and said hello, how­ever, instead of greet­ing me back, the old man grabbed my gen­i­tals in his hand, jan­gled my junk, and mut­tered some­thing unin­tel­li­gi­ble. He released my loins, threw his head back and cack­led, before shuf­fling off to the far end of the locker room and out of sight.

I stood there for a moment, feel­ing naked–partly because I was, and partly because I felt vio­lated in a very inti­mate way. I knew that I was at a cross­roads where I could see myself as a vic­tim of a rather impo­tent sex­ual assault, or as some­one who had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time as a lit­tle old man with demen­tia shuf­fled by. On one hand, I felt a per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity to report the man to man­age­ment, because he might do it again to some­one less for­giv­ing, plus he obvi­ously needed some help, right? Plus, it nei­ther seemed like a sex­ual assault nor did the lit­tle guy seem to be aroused by it, so maybe I was mak­ing a big deal out of nothing.

As I replayed the events in my head, it now seemed that what the lit­tle old guy might have actu­ally said to me may have been “Boy, that sure is a big one, young fella!” and had merely grabbed my repro­duc­tive organs to indi­cate exactly what he was refer­ring to, less there be any con­fu­sion with another part of my body, such as my right elbow or nose. This logic appealed to both my aver­sion to con­flict and per­sonal van­ity. Also, since I needed to be back at work in 15 min­utes, I chose the lat­ter the­ory and headed to the showers.

In the almost 20 years since that inci­dent, and I think that I missed the most obvi­ous expla­na­tion: Some­times older peo­ple just like to mess with younger people’s heads. I can see that old fella now, telling the story over din­ner to his lit­tle wife. “I grabbed this young whippersnapper’s peter at the gym today, Ger­tie, and you should have seen the look on that schmuck’s face.” He slaps his knee and laughs and wipe his eyes. “I love @#%*ing with these kids today. Pass the salt.”