Blame the Wharf, Bless the Bacon

by in Archive Words
"The Pier" by Gwen MacQuarrie

He was on Grandpa Hours now, and he wasn’t quite sure how that’d happened. It was only a few years ago that he’d been up till ungodly-o’-clock and sleeping (re: Crashing. Hard.) from noonish to dinnertime.

Now? He was in bed a little before midnight and full-tilt, pants-on-and-everything awake at six. If the mythical Ass Crack of Dawn really did exist, he woke up staring right into it every morning. It was about as nice as it sounded.

And it worried him. Here he was, not yet thirty, and still his sleep patterns were edging scarily into total old man territory. What if that was just the start of it? Pretty soon he’d be watching Jeopardy! religiously and other cliché old…guy…stuff, he guessed.

(He took it as a good sign that he couldn’t think of what else he might be doing on the “If You Do X, You Might Be Geriatric” list.)

Aha, but wait, there was something else on the old man front. That being the fact that he stumbled off to a diner every morning while the sun was still yawning and scratching itself.

But he could justify that, honest. See, those Early Bird Specials were beautifully cheap, and his love of bacon canceled out the shame and fear of geezerdom. His impeachable love of breakfast food in general was justification enough.

Right? Right. Sure. Why not?

Anyway. Hoofing it to the diner was nice exercise, except on the days when it was bitter, bone-stabbing, oh-shit-my-eyeballs-just-froze cold out.

He blamed the chill that came off the lake (wharf? He didn’t actually know) and distant misty mountains. Oh, it was nice, living by the water, eating lots of seafood (lakefood?). It was worth it just to see the sky go beautiful pastel every morning, underlined by the pristine mountains and water.

It was inspiring, and it filled him with a glowing serenity as he went on his merry way to reacquaint his mouth with delicious pig bits and fresh coffee every morning.

It also made the cold mornings about twelve times colder, and left him a shivering wreck wrapped in a jacket and big headphones when he jittered into the diner.

But really, the thought that worried him about all this? If it was this bad now, while he had the geezer habits but a virile young man body…how bad would it be when he was actually decrepit?

A shudder went up his spine then, at the grim possibilities.

Also, y’know, because he was, like, Really Damn Cold.

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Josh Hechinger

Josh Hechinger is a future writing superstar/cautionary tale. He lives in Pennsylvania.
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