I Told a Stranger What to Do Next Time

It went over well

Photograph by Jeenah Moon / Bloomberg / Getty

I’m on the top floor of Fairway on the Upper West Side of New York City.

I’m about to go down the stairs, but I stop because I see a guy in bad shape walking up. He’s in his seventies, he’s got a dead cigar in his mouth, and he’s coming up slowly, taking each step with the same good leg. He stops and gestures for me to pass him on the stairs, but I say, “No, you first.”

When he reached the top landing I said, using my best deadpan, “However, the next time you see me you need to move faster.”

To which he smiled and said, “I’ll try to remember that.”

And then he said, “It’s no fun getting older. Every day is hell on Earth.”

To which I said, “I can imagine.”

And then we parted ways.

I would wager that his smile was the only one he had today.

So I did a good thing.

Barry Lyons is a freelance writer and copy editor. He has no focus on any particular area and instead likes to write essays on disparate subjects: [how to use the apostrophe s](https://medium.com/@lyonsnyc/the-new-york-times-and-its-inane-apostrophe-s-policy-fc5a4d2f8c14), two challenges for religious people (still waiting for a response that knocks me out of the ring), the Indiana Jones movies, and his discovery that there’s something AI will never be able to do.