Dear Sweet Old Man Walking In The Park,

LISTEN UP YOU SON OF A BITCH.

I regret ever initiating the wave hello in which we so tediously engage each morning. Must we, Mr. Old Man, always smile and nod/nod and wave when we see one another? MUST WE?

I don’t always feel in a waving mood on my early morning run. I find this dastardly tradition of our hello to be an imposition upon my freedom for appropriate early morning curmudgery.

Nothing, however, compares to the pure insolence you show by walking around the running path THE WRONG WAY.

I don’t care if there isn’t a sign. Everyone else goes counterclockwise. Go counterclockwise. Take your anti-establishment rabble-rousing elsewhere, you old coot!

For the last three years we have done battle daily.

TWICE every SINGLE morning I am forced to either move out of your way or play chicken with you until you move out of mine. Twice each morning I consider putting my shoulder into you and ending this once and for all.

Do you think I like running? I’m only there in the first place because my doctor told me exercise would help with this horrid anger problem of mine, you asshole.

And what is this thing you do that is neither walking nor running but has yet somehow broken from the realm of speed walking? You look like you’re hurrying to a business meeting that is impossibly far away.

You infuriate me, Sweet Old Man Walking In The Park. But I guess that doesn’t matter to you, you goddamn sociopath.

See you tomorrow,

You Fifty Years Ago