Friday, January 4, 2008

Old People

I don’t’ know if it’s just me, or what. But people always seem to bother me on the streets whenever I’ve decided to have alone time. I don’t know why this happens, I’m not exactly screaming ‘I’m alone right now! Please come talk to me’ but it just always seems to happen given it’s a bum or otherwise.

The other day while waiting at the train station in Philadelphia this once again happened. This time however it was an old man. Very withered in the face, with a rather warm disposition about his character. He also was very hard of hearing which after a while became a little aggravating because whenever I wanted to say something I had to repeat myself in a rather loud manner. But I didn’t talk much, he was quite a chatty man.

He mainly discussed how Philadelphia used to look and how all it’s wonder has been lost over the past years. Once being a place that was bigger then New York and having only 5 large hotels, none of which were chains, has now crumbled into a forgotten land full of indie-pop-hipsters, lawyers, and bums.

As well as discussing his thoughts on the city, he also mentioned how he left home when he was 14 years old and during those times he wasn’t expected to go to college so it was natural to wander about as he did. He apparently made his way done the east coast to New Orleans where he lived for a while. I think he probably did small jobs or pawned money off people, I can’t exactly remember.

I tried getting in a few words. I really didn’t know what to ask him about except what I could learn from him after all his experiences. I can’t remember what he said actually, probably darted the question. But after our 30min conversation I kinda got the impressions old people always get the ‘Any Advice I Can Learn For My Life?’ question and that really old people just want to have some nice stranger to talk to to tell them about their lives, and have this person react in a manner that would make the old people realize their lives were worth living.

At least that’s my guess.