Season's Greetings from Don Lockerdew.

 

I was in a nearly deserted Walmart

doing some early holiday shopping.

My mask was beginning to smother me.

In the distance I saw a familiar figure.

He was walking with a peculiar limp.

I hurried up to him.

"Hey" I said to his back,

"are you Don Lockerdew?"

The man slowly turned around.

His eyes crinkled with delight.

"Holy moley!" he exclaimed. 

"Is that Tork, from Bentley High?"

"You bet your sweet bippy it is!" 

I hollered at him.

There were so few people in the store

that I felt no constraint about shouting.

"How long has it been?" I asked him,

touching elbows with him.

"How long has it been?" he echoed back.

We stood six feet apart, looking

each other over.

"Well" he finally said, "Season's Greetings!"

"You too, old pal" I replied.

Suddenly I had an irresistible urge 

to tear the mask from his face.

So I did.

He had grown a mustache since high school.

He gave an angry yelp of surprise

and tore my mask off.

"You had your teeth fixed" he said.

So I suckered punched him.

I was remembering how much

I hated him back in high school.

He was a bully and a thief.

He took a swing at me and missed.

I could smell whiskey on his breath.

"Turned into a drunk, didja?" I jeered.

"I bet that's a wig" he yelled,

snatching it from my head.

"Give it back, pizza face" I said quietly.

He had terrible acne in the tenth grade.

On a hunch, I swatted his nose.

As I thought -- it was a fake.

He had a prosthetic nose.

It went flying into the housewares aisle.

Then we grappled until the security guards came.

Afterwards I took him to my brother-in-law,

who's an orthopedic surgeon.

A simple operation fixed Don's clubfoot.

He could never afford it on his salary,

with no health benefits.

But I had done very well since high school.

We took a road trip together to South Dakota.

I asked him how he had lost his nose.

He said "It was bitten off."

We never discussed it again.