Park Benches

I understand why we see old men sitting alone on park benches.

There is a lot of history sitting on those benches. 

Not all of them sit on park benches feeding pigeons.  Some are alone.  Occasionally you see them sitting in pairs.  There are others like those sitting in pairs.  They sit in coffee shops or at McDonald’s occupying tables for hours and sipping their coffee, black.  Those sitting in pairs on park benches or at restaurant tables talk about the sorry state of politics, their grandkids that they see occasionally, sports scores, their last prostate exam, and whose names they recognize in the obituaries.  Mostly they talk about the past.  Like their counterparts sitting in pairs or in the coffee shops, those sitting alone think about the past.  They think about the good times.  They think about the not-so-good times and when they do, they think about the would have, could have, and should have things that they never did.

You can only sit with your buddies at the coffee shop table so long before you move on to your individual life, then you are in a solo act, like the other old men sitting alone on park benches.

But they also think of where they had been, their successes, and their triumphs.  Some think of the respect they had among peers and the need they filled.  It’s nice to be needed.  Everybody is the best at something no matter how big or insignificant it may be.  It is nice to fill a role, a gap, and to think that when you walked out a door for the last time that you left a void.  But, they know it isn’t true.  No one is irreplaceable.  Not having a place in the world, the world you lived in is hard.  Being valued for who you were and what you were is nice, but that value is worth nothing in the present.  “Thank you for your service.  It’s over now.  Please step aside.  You aren’t needed now.  Someone else has taken your place.”

The title of the book and subsequent movie was No Country for Old Men.  But, there are park benches.