"Like My Father but Simpler"

I've seen him before but I'll be damned if I can't remember where. His eyes were polite, soft and darted back and forth in their own rhythmic twitch as if set to his brain's own timer. I sat in my booth holding the ceramic mug of coffee to my lips and watched him as he slipped two quarters into the newspaper box outside the diner window.  He looked to be my dad's age but with a much gentler face and the smile of a mischievous child.  He clapped his hands together as he waited for the coins to register in the metal slot and then he looked inside the vending machine like a child waiting for a sheet of cookies to be taken out of the oven.  He rolled the paper up under his short arm and he bounded into the diner where I sat with a plate of pancakes and a pot of black coffee. His black mustache might make you think he was a husband or a truck driver or an alcoholic, but the moment he walked in the door, I could see he was a man who had never been kissed, driven a car, or tasted a beer.

I could never understand how my heart could pick out the adult in the crowd that looked like life had dealt them a stack of cards that no one wanted to hold; the hand of the simple-minded, the lonely, the picked-on, the put-down; men without shells.

I watched the man who looked like my father but simpler, high-five the waitresses that wore too much hairspray and called everyone "sugar" as he strode in with his paper.  The diner was filled with pairs of pock-faced, red-nosed men in camouflage as turkey season had begun that day. They slammed their coffee cups down with weighted fists and they discussed union benefits and truck parts.  They ate their breakfast meats first as this is the custom of whole, hard men.  To fill their bellies with the flesh of other animals, those conquered by men like themselves that now lied in a puddle of ketchup, asserted their high place in the universe.  I was more interested in the man who looked like my father but simpler and watching him wave at people from the interior of the clear bubble than encased him.

He smiled a toothy smile and skated his way to a corner booth where someone I assumed was his mother waited for him. He delivered the paper to her waiting hands before he slid into his corner of the booth. I became happy because breakfast was being eaten in pairs all over the diner and the man with the soft black eyes would not be rendered defenseless on a stool with his back to the hungry crowd if he was without company or protection. I was relieved that he had someone  there who could protect him from the whole, hard men who stared at him with full bellies and hard, unbroken minds.

Was I sad because the man who looks like my father but simpler will never know how it feels to have a to-do list on Saturday morning like I did? Will he ever know how it feels to have self-satisfaction from earning money from a job when one has a whole brain?  Would he ever know what it would feel like to sit across the table from a woman that wasn't his mother and dream life's dreams over eggs and toast with her?

Or was I sad for me because the man who looks like my father but simpler will never know how it feels to have a to do list on Saturday morning and I was jealous?  He will never plagued by migraines headaches that scrape away at his brain over the to-do lists that dog our heels to the grave.  He will never waste his weekends beautifying a home that he works his knuckles to the bone to pay for whether or not there comes any self-satisfaction in paying for it or keeping it up.  He will never have a job that chains him to a pension, an unused college education or a mound of insurmountable debt that siphons the oxygen out of his soul.  He will never have his heart broken by a woman or have a child taken away from him too soon.  His bubble kept the pain out swirling around in our world, where we had the capacity to feel it and be devastated by it.

I watched the man who looked like my father but simpler scan the smudgy plastic menu in his hands. He held it close to his nose like a child reading a comic book and he smiled a toothy smile before deciding on waffles with lots of strawberries and whipped cream. He had the best of everything. A sunny corner booth in a diner, a breakfast that threw caution to the wind, and a broken brain that kept him safe from the whole, hard world outside.