The pizza

Harold walked his schnauzer down the narrow streets of Shadyside. How he remembered his college years on these very same streets, wanting to slap some sense into the eager, fresh-faced college student, too anxious to shake off innocence for experience as he downed pizza after pizza with his college buddies. He brushed against the same brownstone walls and the same low-hanging sidewalk trees as eighty years ago. He remembered the burst of promise settling on his shoulders in college when he explored the mystery of the arts and sciences. How had that promise turned into a minefield of expectations that he had to tippy-toe through all his life? Hadn't the twenties been a decade of unlimited possibilities, blissfully unaware of what lurked beyond?

He played his game of avoiding sidewalk cracks that October morning. In his twenties he hadn't needed an overcoat in October. In his twenties his stomach could take five pizzas a week. He'd scamper down the street in slacks and a light shirt, enjoying the cool Pittsburgh breeze. Harold recalled his bravado when he turned thirty, but he really begrudged the new decade. In those ten years he morphed into a workhorse of bullet items, laundry lists, all the artifacts of a pumped-up ego as he strutted down the street, drowning in confidence. And then his forties gave him a salty dose of reality -- a slice of pizza, perhaps, at lunch but only once a week or so. The divorce, the layoff, he had a lot more to learn, much more than he'd already learned, and had fewer years to do it -- more than half way to dead, probably. Fifty and the bankruptcy knocked Harold off his feet, his ego splattered on the floor like blood, left only with anxiety and fear, yearning for his golden years in the sun and shade. Life promised him nothing, it guaranteed him nothing. Life settled down and he married a bookish Squirrel Hill widow when he turned sixty.  Reality stared him in his freckled, blotched, wrinkled face, no choice but to abandon his long-forgotten dreams and accept the brutal realities staring him in the face.

When he turned seventy, his gait slowed down as he buried the second wife and walked yet another of his dogs down this street. He noticed the trees and flowers more and more. It surprised him that his warts, blemishes, wrinkles, and lines didn't bother him. Just the opposite, they proved he'd lived his life well. He survived the heart attack he had in his early eighties and lived every day in the moment, just as it arrived, just as it departed. He laughed at outliving the world when he turned ninety, but had no choice but to say goodbye to his family, his friends with graceful, quiet simplicity as they departed this world for the next, embraceable world. Last Thursday Harold turned one hundred. He celebrated with young friends at Oakland Pizza, the first taste of his old college staple in more than ten years.

He could still walk on his own, he could still take his latest dog for a walk down these flat, narrow streets of Shadyside, the same streets he'd walked so many decades ago during college. In his latest years he befriended young college students again. They'd ignored him for decades but now they befriended him, seeking him out for advice, for wisdom. He told them the whole thing was one big colossal joke.