Spring, oh spring. It gives such promise to happy days, does it not? Fresh starts, new beginnings. That’s what Mr. Dale Gibson thought about sunny days in the spring. He always loved those kinds of days, for it brought out the best in him. Today was one of those days, he noted as he saw the sun out his window. He was looking forward to the adventures that the day would bring, as he stepped out onto his porch in front of his apartment. It made him determined to enjoy the day. At several years north of seventy, Mr. Gibson knew that when he put his mind to something, he’d do it. So he smiled, enjoying the lovely, lovely day stretched ahead of him.

This particular bright, sunny spring morning featured the sun gleaming a huge wide grin. It helped to warm the earth quickly, making everything seem brilliant and fresh. The air smelled new and young, even here in the midst of the city, it really did. Mr. Gibson stood on the stoop in front of his apartment, inhaling all of the morning glory into his lungs with hearty gulps of air. My, what a breath of fresh air would do for a man, he thought. It was almost as good as a good gal by his side, he chuckled to himself, if only he could get himself a decent one. That, it seemed, was an impossible task nowadays, despite Mr. Gibson’s positive attitude. Oh well, Mr. Gibson chuckled to himself, a man couldn’t have everything, right? That’s the way the cookie crumbled, or so the saying went, he thought. But a man could always hope for the best.

Unfortunately, the gals today weren’t what they used to be, he sighed. The thought put a bit of a damper on the good cheer of the day. So much had changed over the years, and not necessarily for the better. The gals were like a barometer for how much society had degraded, Mr. Gibson observed. They’d gotten all mad and stormy, like bad weather. And the gals wondered why hurricanes had been named for them, until the feminists got all hussy and made everyone include men’s names in the mix. Everything had gotten all screwed up when those bra-burning broads got involved, Mr. Gibson declared in his mind. Their shenanigans cost him two wives and with them a boatload of alimony, until both dames found other schmoes to marry them and support their lazy behinds. This freewheeling divorce thing seemed to cause more problems than it solved, Mr. Gibson thought. Amazing what a society could do itself, if it let itself get out of hand, he mentally concluded.

But, Mr. Gibson decided there was no use in allowing a bunch of man-hating broads to get him down. It was, after all, a beautiful spring day. He bounded down his porch stairs, feeling decades younger than his seventy plus years, and hit the sidewalk with stride. He was heading towards the diner to meet up with his friends, like he did every day. Some of them were single, like him. There was his friend Ollie, who like Mr. Gibson had been kicked out by two wives, and had no kids, also like him. Both of them laughed every time, saying that maybe birth control was worth something, because alimony was bad enough without having to support a bunch of brats for decades. Then there was Ed, who was still pining because his wife Margaret died ten years ago, and believed there was no other woman like her. Judging from the gals Mr. Gibson had seen, Ed was probably right, so he’d probably die mourning his Margaret to the end. There was Joe, whose wife like Ed’s also kicked the bucket. But unlike Ed the weeping widower, Joe wasn’t pining over his dead old lady at all. It was a slow business day indeed when Joe was down to courting two gals at a time. Joe did even better with the ladies than Mr. Gibson did, probably because women had a habit of getting all weepy over a man who lost his wife. Getting dumped by two women who were still alive and kicking apparently didn’t hold quite the same allure, which probably owed to the disparity between Joe and Mr. Gibson’s romantic success. But despite the rivalry, Mr. Gibson admired ole Joe. Ain’t no reason why you can’t enjoy some action, if the gals were willing to give it, Mr. Gibson reasoned.

Regardless of lifestyle, as far as Mr. Gibson was concerned, all the single guys were faring better than their married friends George, Henry, and Frank. Those boys were promptly kicked out every morning by their wives, because the ladies didn’t like the retired men interfering with their little wifely “routines”. Supposedly the men got in the way, and that their presences and habits messed with the ladies’ “offices”, as the gals called the houses the guys paid for. Gee whiz, Mr. Gibson thought to himself, if a man’s house couldn’t be his castle, the world really was running on its last legs. The whole thing made him actually pity his married friends, made him thank the Heavens he was single. A free-wheeling bachelor like Mr. Gibson could come and go as he pleased, both from his own humble apartment, and with the women he chose to keep company with. Women really had changed over the years, all of them, he thought sadly. They used to smile, be happy. Now, they were supposedly free because of women’s lib, but they seemed more messed up than back in the day when he was courting, back when they were supposedly ‘oppressed’. Mr. Gibson never figured out what it was they were oppressed by, but he had come to find that a man’s opinion really didn’t count much when it came to what women wanted.

Here’s an example, of what the world had come to nowadays, the degradation that Mr. Gibson had witnessed with his own eyes. There was this young girl Louise who lived two doors down from him. She was a young gal, about thirty or so, give or take a few years, yet she wasn’t married. What was the problem, that a girl that age wasn’t wearing a man’s ring? Was she ugly? Heck, no. She was, as people liked to say nowadays, hot. Nice curves, not all anorexic like all those actresses on TV, or as half of them liked to be called nowadays, ‘actors’, for crying out loud. Louise also had a nice smile, that is when she cared to display it, which showed off her pretty face. No real obvious flaws in this girl, but yet she wasn’t married, or even engaged to a fellow. No, Louise wasn’t married, but she wasn’t exactly single either. She lived with a fellow, Tad, Chad, Rad, Mad, whatever his name was. Mr. Gibson had forgotten it, because he was too busy watching Louise’s curves when she introduced him to the skinny dweeb. Mr. Gibson didn’t want to come off as a senile old fart to Louise, which he wasn’t, or a dirty old man, which he most definitely wasn’t. He just enjoyed watching dames, and what single man wouldn’t?

So Mr. Gibson didn’t ask to be reintroduced to the guy who was ruining her reputation, shacking up with her like that. It’s like they used to say in his day, why buy the cow if you could get the milk for free, right? Apparently, no matter what the hussy feminists said, Mr. Gibson noted this was still true. Because last year, Louise started getting really, really fat out of nowhere. Mr. Gibson was not particularly shocked when he started hearing little screaming brats in Louise’s apartment, and with Louise coincidentally no longer being fat, except in the way that most new mothers were bodacious were when they’d just given birth. Their neighbor across from them, a sixty-something potato sack housewife known to the youngsters as Mrs. Hendricks, or Edith to Mr. Gibson, told him the names of the twin brats. But he forgot them when she said that Louise wasn’t married, and wasn’t planning to, even though Tad/Cad/Mad was still living there. Mr. Gibson knew this for sure, because he still saw the Cad’s red Dodge Challenger out there, every night, night after night. Well, that was the fault of the gals today, Mr. Gibson decided. The girls today were silly enough to be fast, and they were even more foolish to pretend that it did nothing to tarnish them. Mr. Gibson shook his head sadly. What dignity women sacrificed to pretend they were free, he thought. Like he said, women were the barometer of the world. That meant that things were going south, fast.

Well, Mr. Gibson thought with a slight shrug, the movement giving his pace an extra bounce, there wasn’t much that one could do about these things. If the world wanted to go to heck in a handbasket, his mental conversations with himself continuing, so be it. Mr. Gibson could only do the best he could, remembering the old ways and old-fashioned manners, could only be himself. If the world was turning rude and crude, and the women cruder and lewder, he could only try to hold up his head up above the fray and whistle a happy tune. That’s what he did now, whistling as he walked along the way. The first song that came to mind was Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.” He remembered that song as a youngster, cruising along the beach in his Chevy, with some gal as his passenger. He’d forgotten her name, but not her blond looks, laughing away. He took the gal’s hand as he drove, as Marilyn crooned, “A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” as he planted a gentlemanly smooch his gal’s left hand like a proposal. She laughed again, and scooted next to him, nestling next to him as he drove, so he felt the curves of her body in profile oh so close. That’s as far as any hanky-panky went between them, but Mr. Gibson hadn’t needed any more necking to make him feel like a man, showing the gal off by his side as he cruised past his friends on the freeway with her by his side. When he dropped her off that day, that was the last time Mr. Gibson ever saw her, but boy, he remembered her. Now, that was courting as its best, a gentleman and a dame. Not this junk that passed for romance today. What was the new thing that the youngsters did? “Friends with benefits”? What the heck was that even supposed to mean? The statement made him think of people eating garbage on the side of the road when a hot, steaming buffet was just ten feet away. Mr. Gibson cringed, contemplating what the world had come to. Even the women of Mr. Gibson’s age were falling for the crass practices of the day, selling themselves like used car parts in classifieds on the computer. Boy, if that was what everything had come down to, Mr. Gibson would rather harken back to the old days, back when romance was sweet, the gals had class, and women were dames and ladies.

As Mr. Gibson thought about these things, he rounded a street corner, heading down the block which the diner was on. There were various people walking here and there, and with his new prescription glasses that transformed from sunglasses to indoor glasses, Mr. Gibson saw them all clearly. It was a Friday, but since it was one of those kinds of days that tempted people to play hookey, calling in sick with a bad case of spring fever, there seemed to more than the usual amount of housewives rushing to stores, workers grabbing coffee, etc. It seemed to Mr. Gibson that everyone in the world was out today. The crowd included students necking with their girls who probably would sneak home to finish the job, knowing the way kids were, he thought. There were men in suits strolling down the street as though they didn’t have a care in the world, hard work be damned. Seeing them loaf around sure helped explain to Mr. Gibson why the world was stuck in a recession. People today were just too afraid of putting forth a little effort. The younger generation had it easy for too long, and now they didn’t know how to sweat, at least not like everyone did back in Mr. Gibson’s day. Now, it seemed, a nice day was an excuse not to work.

In addition to the loitering males, there were the usual groups of gals pushing baby carriages, except as he had noticed before, there seemed to be more of them than usual. In some ways it was hard to tell, they all kind of looked alike, and Mr. Gibson just wondered if he was seeing the same young mothers over and over again, or not. This weird cloning effect that the ladies displayed struck Mr. Gibson as peculiar, seeing all the goop modern gals put on their faces and the dough they spent on their clothes. You’d think with all that effort, they’d do something to make themselves stand out, or at least look pretty. But nooooooooooo. Even though the gals were all probably married, they all struck Mr. Gibson as cheap knockoffs at a singles bar. Take the gals that were walking towards him. They all wore these spandex things that hugged their behinds, the kind that made men stare, and in return made the gals give back dirty looks. Just like they did to Mr. Gibson today, after he gave them a visual appraisal as they walked by. Well, ladies, if you don’t like the attention, you shouldn’t show off the goods, Mr. Gibson reasoned. So much for the fairer sex, he sighed.

In the midst of all this hullabaloo, he heard something like a bang. Even at his age, Mr. Gibson’s hearing was able to pick up the distinctive noise amidst all the city noise and let his eyes pinpoint where the noise came from. Not far from where he was walking, a blue minivan had rolled its front right wheel onto the curb, a classic harried dame parking job, judging by the vehicle. Mr. Gibson wasn’t surprised at all to see a gal walking out of the leaning machine once the engine was killed. He knew his presumption wouldn’t go over too well with the ladies, but hey, he’d guessed right, hadn’t he?

This gal with the botched parking job seemed to be about thirty, forty, whatever. Her exact age seemed hard for Mr. Gibson gauge, which he was usually good at doing. But in this case, his bad aim wasn’t so surprising seeing that the gal was darting back and forth from one side of the vehicle to the other so quickly it was making his head spin, dragging out bags and packages like she was hauling lumber. First one package came out, landed on the ground, then a door slammed, then she opened the driver door and cursed audibly enough for Mr. Gibson to hear as a screaming horn whizzed by her. This happened four times in rapid succession. Yet no one on the sidewalk did anything, but walk or step over the packages as the gal cursed and scurried, while her vehicle looked like it was ready to topple over. This happened for a fourth time, except this time the package she placed on the ground, a bag of groceries of some sort, tumbled over onto one of the other packages. But either she was ignoring the mess, or didn’t notice it even happening, she was so disorganized. The package’s spill caused a cascade effect amongst the other bags, and stuff was just falling around, everywhere. Mr. Gibson couldn’t take this anymore. All the other bozos on the street were just ignoring this, even though half of them were men. There were no manners in the world anymore, it seemed. Well, Mr. Gibson still had chivalry for the old ways, and he set his mind help the damsel in distress.

So as the gal was busy doing whatever it was on the driver’s side, as another horn blared at her and she belched another unladylike expletive from her mouth, Mr. Gibson started repacking one of the bags. He grabbed a couple of unappetizing frozen diet entrees, some woman’s magazine that told you “How to Tell if He Is Cheating”, some packs of sugarless chewing gum, and a jumbo pack of condoms, which claimed to be Ribbed for Her Pleasure. Mr. Gibson couldn’t help but halt at that as he picked it up, feeling a little embarrassed at these unmentionables. For sure, it wasn’t like Mr. Gibson had never handled one of these contraptions. He’d used quite a few in his times. It was just that, it was one story when he was getting romantic in a private setting handling a box of these. It was quite another when he was holding some strange gal’s stash in the middle of a public street, especially one throwing a hissy fit like this one.

It was his luck, of course, that the cursing dame came reeling back to the passenger side as he was still holding the jumbo pack of condoms. She marched within two feet Mr. Gibson, planted her high heels as if she was a prize fighter ready to strike, like she was Ali taking on Foreman. Her red manicured nails balled into fists into her sides, her mascara looked like knives, and her blue eyes looked like cannonballs. She had a wide, pretty face which would probably light up if she smiled, which she sure as heck wasn’t doing now. It was a face with just the faintest hints of fine lines, placing her closer to the forty side of things, but still young as far as he was concerned. She had nice legs, which were barely covered by those so-called business skirts that women wore nowadays. She looked like a woman who wanted to do battle with whatever or whoever crossed her path. Well, wasn’t that true of all the gals, nowadays? Mr. Gibson reasoned. He sighed, bracing himself for what was coming. A gal’s wrath, it sure was something, wasn’t it? he mused.

“What the hell are you doing?” the cursing dame fired at him. Her fingers flared for a second, and Mr. Gibson noted that despite the gold on many of the digits, there was none where wedding bands went. Well, big surprise there, Mr. Gibson thought sarcastically. Any man stuck with her would have to invest his life savings in soap to wash her mouth out with it as she continued, nodding towards the condoms. “Are you some kind of f&*^ing pervert? Get lost and get the f&*^ out of my sh*&!”

Mr. Gibson had expected a firestorm, but he was whiplashed by the hurricane raging at him. No woman had ever spoke down to him that way, ever in his life. Especially using that kind of language. He was going to have to set this young banshee straight, and stand his ground. “Hey there, missy! Who do you think you are, talking to one of your elders that way? I could be your father, little girl!”

The cursing dame gave a laugh that sounded more like a shriek. “Jesus, holy sh*& I hope not! For one, I haven’t seen that jackass since he walked out on my mom and my sisters and me when I was eight. And even if he was Mr. Cleaver like you seem to imagine yourself to be, a f&*^ing nightmare that would be, my f&*^ing a%$hole father walking around with my condoms! I can’t get it out of my head! I won’t be able to come for f&*^ing weeks, seeing a dirty old man—-”

“Young lady! What is wrong with you, speaking like that in a public setting?” Mr. Gibson noticed he was still holding the condoms. They suddenly felt like a hand grenade to him, and he immediately dropped them on the ground. The woman started putting it back into the bag, but then suddenly stood up, very slowly. She placed a long-nailed finger two inches from his face, then spoke slowly, her voice low yet oddly resonate throughout the street.

“What is wrong with me, old man? It’s men. All of them, but especially old men like you. It’s old men like you who think they know everything. You decided what was supposedly best for everyone. You think you’re something else, don’t you, old man? Greatest generation, all that bull sh*&? Jesus! You gave us pollution, nuclear weapons, world war, and you think you’ve done people like me a favor? Men like you can go to f&*^ing hell. You sure as hell sent everyone else there, while you all sit on your cozy asses, telling everyone what to f&*^ing do, sending kids to war and letting people like me foot the f&*^ing bill. Old, useless fart. That’s. What. You. Are.”

She finished her spiel, and there was a cry of someone yelling out, “Amen, sister! Tell off that geezer.” Outside of the strange sphere where Mr. Gibson and the cursing dame existed, a crowd had gathered. Mr. Gibson just noticed it, just as he just noticed that his entire body was raging and boiling with steam, the second that the cursing dame finished her declaration. The crowd and the woman seemed to be waiting, for something. The menacing finger of the cursing dame was inches away from him, and if this slut of a woman were a man, Mr. Gibson would have grabbed it and broke it in a second, he was that enraged and humiliated. Instead, he breathed once, twice, before saying to the woman. “Get. That. Damned. Finger. Out. Of. My. Face. NOW.”

“Are you threatening me, old man?” She shrieked, but at least the finger left his space. Instead, she now stood at full stretch, her chin and her chest sticking out like she wanted to pretend she was a peacock. Mr. Gibson’s attention went briefly to her torso, and found he was never so unattracted to a rack in his life. She disgusted him. He stood up to his own full height, which luckily for him despite his age and her heels, was still slightly taller than the cursing dame/hissy banshee.

“No, little missy. I am not threatening you. You are not worth my time, or my dignity.”

She guffawed like a drunk man. “Could have f&*^ing fooled me.”

Mr. Gibson was just about to walk away from this disgraceful nonsense, regaining some sense of composure, when all of the sudden one of the lazy dorks standing in the crowd approached them. He had spandex shorts, which looked like the ones the housewives Mr. Gibson had seen before wearing. The dorky punk of a hero also wore something that Mr. Gibson presumed was a shirt. This object had been hacked off at the sleeves and the midriff, so it looked like the lazy dork had stolen it from some juvenile half his size. The punk’s feet bore some weird contraption of sneakers, which ended above his ankle. This hideous footwear sported some kind of corporate logo that Mr. Gibson didn’t recognize, and frankly didn’t want to. The punk wore yellow wraparound sunglasses, which despite the sun requiring some eye protection, gave the impression to Mr. Gibson that the punk was too wimpy to let anyone look into his eyes. The whole bizarre getup was crowned with a shaved head, which based on the punk’s hairline was probably to hide the fact that he was losing his hair, fast. Mr. Gibson knew that the bald head was supposed to be some kind of hipster move, but he felt proud that thirty years north of this punk’s age, he had more hair, even judging by the punk’s hairline. While he was sizing up the lazy dork, the aging punk walked right up to the hussy like some bad stand-in for Superman, saying, “Lady, is this old man giving you trouble? You need help?”

“Oh for crying out loud,” Mr. Gibson couldn’t help but snap.

“What?!” Both the cursing dame and the aging punk snapped back simultaneously. But Mr. Gibson restricted his comeback to the young punk. As he told the cursing dame before, she was not worth his time or his dignity. Just like most of the gals today.

“You think you’re a real man, don’t you? Just like she thinks she’s a real woman. Give me a break. You’re all a bunch of sissies, no morals to boot. It’s a shame.”

“Think of it this way, old man.” The hipster stood close to the old man, who unlike the woman, was taller than Mr. Gibson by at least four inches. The hipster’s mouth grinned fully, his eyes hidden behind his lenses as he finished his declaration. “You’ll be dead soon. You won’t have to deal with assholes like us for long. Your time has long past, and you’re heading for the grave.” He patted Mr. Gibson on the arm. “You can go now.” The slut of a girl laughed.

Mr. Gibson didn’t exactly know what he said in the moment after that, if he said anything at all. Everything in his mind seemed to go blank, at that second. Why, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was being told he was irrelevant, being informed that his ways and his words were leftovers to be carted away to the garbage dump. Especially when those words came from the dregs of modern society, that segment of the population that Mr. Gibson swore he would never stoop to become. At that instant, something inside Mr. Gibson became unstable. It was as if his own body and mind were splitting from each other. He felt his chest constrict, and his insides drop. Both the punk and the slut were grinning at him, and the world felt like it was spinning, faster and faster.

The crowd seemed to be closing in on Mr. Gibson, though whether they were moving physically or not, it was hard to tell. No, he thought as he felt vertigo enveloping him. I’m not letting a punk like this take me out this way, Mr. Gibson thought, fighting the terror of the heart attack that would showed age as sheer weakness. Mr. Dale Gibson had always been, if nothing else, a determined man. He was not going to faint, or have a heart attack. No, he was going to walk away from this. On his own two feet, no less. And with dignity. After all these years, Mr. Gibson had a knack for his own sense of survival in this world.

So before walking away, as he intended to do on his own terms, Mr. Gibson said to the punk, very simply. “You have no class. You have no respect. You are fake, and one day, buster, you will pay. Now, give me my arm back, if you have any sense of decency left in your silly noodle.” The punk’s grin started to constrict, as though a dark cloud was taking it away. Which was what Mr. Gibson had intended. Better for you to give someone else a resentment, he thought, than let one poison you. He’d learned that one over the years, as well. And, the punk had taken his arm off of Mr. Gibson as well. You see, Mr. Gibson spoke mentally to his adversary. Dignity works, every time. Something you will never have.

And with that declaration of personal victory, Mr. Gibson walked away, towards the periphery of the crowd. The spectators seemed to open a hole for him, though Mr. Gibson took no time to observe who they were, what they looked like, if they favored his side, or that of the absurd couple he was walking away from. It didn’t matter, really. Mr. Gibson had stood up for himself, and it was enough to help him survive what could have been a disaster, if he had been only half the man he knew he was.

As he cleared the crowd, before the circle closed again, he turned to look at the punk and the cursing dame. The punk was holding onto the pack of condoms, as he made a pretense of helping her with the rest of her useless stuff. Mr. Gibson saw the punk looking her up and down, settling his gaze on her legs. She didn’t react, not a bit. Something about this image made Mr. Gibson sick to his stomach, why, he didn’t know. Well, the slut could have the stupid punk, if that was what she wanted. Another example, it seemed, of how all the women in the world had gone to hell in a handbasket. Maybe the punk was right. Maybe it was a good thing, that Mr. Gibson would kick the bucket soon so he wouldn’t be around to witness more of this downslide. This thought threatened to pummel Mr. Gibson’s spirits once again. It was amazing how a such a bright sunny day could turn so gloomy, he noted. It was a shame, and Mr. Gibson wanted to do everything possible to turn that around.

So Mr. Gibson stood away from the passersby and spectators on the sidewalk, taking breath by measured breath, watching as the crowd dispersed and went on its way, now that the sideshow was over. Some of the observers walked by him. They said nothing to him, did nothing at all. It was as though he didn’t exist. Which Mr. Gibson, if he were a weaker man, would have taken as proof that the punk was right, he was nothing but an irrelevant old fart in this forsaken world.

But Mr. Gibson was not stupid, weak, or bowed easily, which presumably would have been upsetting for the young punk with the weird clothes and no class to learn. Instead of taking the rejection to heart, he noted that the crowd was also ignoring the cursing dame and the young punk. They were just as irrelevant as he, no matter how much posturing they did. The whole thing had been a circus to the passersby, not a statement that he, Mr. Gibson, was a useless, irrelevant has-been. The whole scenario even turned comical, when the punk jumped into the cursing dame’s minivan, tried to get it off the curb by putting it into reverse, and promptly backed it into the sedan parked behind it at what appeared to be a full five miles per hour. The cursing dame started stomping on the sidewalk at this, those tentacled fingers balled into fists once again, and presumably, based on her mouth’s movements, was cursing up a storm once more. Well, lady, Mr. Gibson thought. You got what you deserve. Goodbye young wench, and good riddance.

Somehow, the moments of downtime and that little scene of lousy parking made Mr. Gibson feel better. It surprised him, because it really shouldn’t have. By all accounts, that scene should have been a caption of how the world was devolving and degrading, the last of the real men and heroes dying off with Mr. Gibson and men his age. But it didn’t. Oddly enough, it made him feel better. Sure, the young punk was right. He’d be going out soon, six feet under. But Mr. Gibson would be doing it with his head held high, not crawling to the level of vermin. He still had his dignity.

The sun suddenly felt warm once again. The air felt fresh, and new. Mr. Gibson looked at his watch, and realized that the circus clowns on the sidewalk had only stolen five minutes from him. Easy enough to bounce back from, and he wasn’t even late to meet his buddies at the diner. Boy, what a story he had for them today, how he took on a young punk and walked away from it like a real man with class.

There was a theater, two doors down from the diner. It showed Broadway knock-offs, second and third runs of musicals for several weeks at a time. Mr. Gibson liked to check out the itinerary, for sometimes the establishment showed the good solid classics, and those always warmed his heart. From a distance, Mr. Gibson saw a poster displaying young naval sailors and women dressed in old-fashioned bathing attire. The graphics drew Mr. Gibson in to read the poster, which instructed him that “South Pacific” was going to be here for a month run, starting the following week. Mr. Gibson smiled, feeling comradery with whomever it was who relished the nostalgia of the old days. After relaying today’s adventure to the fellows, Mr. Gibson decided that he’d invite them all to see the show with him.

He walked away from the theater, whistling “There is Nothing Like a Dame.” There sure wasn’t, especially back then when courting was really courting, the women were gals, and guys were men. He carried the tune for the rest of his walk, thinking of the days of old with a girl by his side in his Chevy, the cursing dame and the aging punk long forgotten. It was a sunny day, after all. Mr. Gibson was glad to be here to enjoy it to the fullest.