An old man laughing.

Dennis steps outside, pulls a bent Camel Light from his breast pocket. He lights the cigarette, awkwardly juggling his coffee, and inhales shallowly.

An old man sits at a table on the patio to his right. The man’s face immediately reminds Dennis of 19th century photos from the California Gold Rush. A prospector. The man is wearing a dark grey suit that’s seen better days. The man has seen better days. But he laughs with a genuine, full spirited laugh, touched by a hint of smoker’s rasp.

Dennis follows the man’s eye-line, trying to see what the old man is laughing at. The elementary school across the street. Dennis doesn’t see anything obviously comedic. The man could just be senile. He could be remembering a joke from twenty years ago, vacantly staring at nothing at all. Dennis enjoys imagining that the man has just seen a kid in the playground fall down. One of those running full-speed falls where your head just outpaces your feet. The kid is bounding along one second and the next he’s airborne, his feet flying out behind him, spilling into the air. He skids across the grass a few inches and lies still for a moment before propping himself up. His hands stained green and covered in wet dirt, he looks around for someone to acknowledge the traumatic injury he’s just incurred. When nobody takes the time to offer him pity or empathy, the kid simply jumps up and runs off again, chasing the red kick ball that is still rolling away towards the other side of the playground.

Dennis imagines the old man, with his several rows of misaligned teeth stained yellow from tobacco, a human-shark hybrid, remembering what it was to be a child of that age. An age when pity wasn’t something that you gave yourself but received from others. An age when, if someone didn’t acknowledge your pain, you didn’t hurt.

The old man’s laugh fades from the high spirits to an cheerful chuckle to a fit of chest rattling coughs, his lungs driving out phlegm and spent amusement. Dennis vows to never reach that age.