2024: The Story So Far

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A rumor went around recently that I had died. At first I thought, “Why hadn’t anyone contacted me to ask?” but then I realized how silly it would be to call a dead person and inquire if he is dead.

* * * *
I learned yesterday that I am not dead. This was not news to me, as my Sunday morning activities carried most of the evidence of a living human life as lived by me: I was frustrated once again by one of my local coffeeshops.

A question/rant before I continue: Is the overfilling of take-out coffee orders something local to where I reside, or is this a new practice at coffeeshops everywhere?

Some months ago I noticed that at the moment the large or venti paper coffee cup is placed gently in my hand by a genial server and I turn around to leave the counter area, this minimal movement of my body converts the venti into a grande as the scalding hot coffee douses my hand through the hole in the plastic lid—even with a plastic stopper installed by the genial server. This started to happen to me (or for me, to make something positive out of it) at multiple coffeeshops here and in other local cities last autumn. Coffeeshops have started to fill cups close to the top and then add cream to bring the whole thing to the top. Last week, I inaugurated a new practice: I would ask with my out-loud voice if the server would please not overfill or would please dump out some of the coffee rather than fill it to the rim. For non-scientific purposes, I report to you that this has worked one out of two times so far, and yesterday was not that time.

I knew I was alive because my hand was scalded and smelled like a medium roast, but I did not know that I am not dead until I was told.
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A Valentine’s Day Knockout

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

It was as if every wish I had made in childhood for a hole in the ground to open up and rescue me had been answered in reverse …

* * * *
I bear a scar from the first Valentine’s Day that I had a reason to celebrate as Valentine’s Day, as a part of a couple.

Until the last decade, my romantic history was a long walk alone in an empty field, punctuated by moments in which I interrupted someone else’s walk, attempted to try a relationship, and discovered that I try people’s patience instead. (All the women I have dated are brilliant and accomplished and I was lucky to get to know them; I was stuck at age fifteen for an astonishingly long time, however.)
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‘I Still Believe in Santa’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?—Virginia O’Hanlon, a question published in the New York Sun on September 21, 1897

She was an elderly woman in a hospital near Albany, NY, on Christmas Day 1969. When a hospital maintenance worker who always dressed as Santa for Christmas came around her room, someone thought to take a photo of the handshake between Santa and Mrs. Douglas, who looks quite delighted indeed.

Mrs. Douglas and Santa shared a long history together, and they still do. Christmas is a day in which we can re-meet ourselves, re-meet ourselves as children, experience a sensation of faith if not faith itself. A little photo from 1969 of an elderly patient with Santa is a small glimpse of one such small moment.
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