Fly Like An Elmo

Once again it's Friday and time for Ultimate Flash Fiction under the guidance, stewardship, and benevolent dictatorship of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

As for me, this is chance to show off my very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, one of which is clearly not bringing in these babies at 100 words or less as is the time-honored custom. 

The prompt above suggest the story below. 

Ready, folks?

It's time to fly like an Elmo! 

FLY LIKE AN ELMO

The sights and sounds of the county fair had little Ted's senses reeling, and Bert Allen, his dad, was only too happy to indulge his precious son's every whim.

But toys that fly?

"Course they do, high as an eagle!" said the Carny. "Wanna see?"

The Carny produced  three toys - a  Barbie doll, a Ken, and a Tickle Me Elmo.  He asked Bert and Ted to select one.

"Do you have a  GI Joe, mister?" asked Ted. 

"Sorry, sonny, that one's in the back," said the Carny.  "Got some smoke damage, covered with soot.  Pick one of these three."

Ted pointed to Elmo, and the Carny plucked up the venerable Muppet and flicked the "on" switch on the back of his head.

Elmo sputtered and shook, but didn't take flight.

"Sorry, boys and girls, takes him a minute or two to warm up!  Why don't ya get some food or something and come right back?" 

Bert and Ted set off to do just that,  but all any of the vendors had were soft pretzels best fit for hammering rail spikes and popcorn left over from last New Year's Eve.

When they returned, Elmo was nowhere to be seen.

"Where'd he go?" asked Ted.

"Just went up," said the Carny. "Gonna take me some time to bring him back down." 

"What kind of a deal is this?!"  exploded Bert.  "The one you want is blacked out,  you have to wait for it to go up, you have to wait for it to come down, and there isn't a goddamn thing to eat!"

"Whaddya expect, buddy?"  replied  the Carney.  "Haven't you flown anywhere lately?"

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No Country for Dirty Old Men

"Buy you a drink, lovey?"

At what age does one first officially become a dirty old man?

This is a rite of passage in our culture nobody talks much about.

Authors don’t chronicle its sweet blossoming. Songwriters don’t rhapsodize about the kickin’ back, lovin’ life, feelin’ groovy exuberance and sense of possibility it sets free. And rabbis don’t give sermons about how today “you are a man - that is, a dirty old one.”

You don’t even get to receive a diploma from Hugh Hefner.

I started to notice something untoward several years ago when my sexual fantasies began to change. Each and every one of them began to require a lengthy preamble explaining how it was that the young women who starred in them happened to be incredibly sexually passionate and aroused over someone who best fit the description of their dad’s bowling partner.

It is a cruel and unfair fact of life that regardless of how we older guys may look - even if we look like we’ve been dunked in a vat of hydrochloric acid - we see women our own age as more the type of person we’d prefer to have knit us a sweater or bake us a pie than engage with us in activities that may entail the shouting out of four letter words.

It ain’t fair and it ain't pretty, I know.  

But then again neither are we!

So we tend to cast our askance glances at women unlikely to cast back any kind of glance at us, askance or otherwise. Women of years a bit more tender and certainly more juicy than our own.

We lust after them. We dream about them. We try not to think about the fact that the sight of any one of us and any one of them engaged in any activity more graphic than birding is something not so long ago even we ourselves would have gagged over.

Do we approach them?

The richest, boldest, and those with the most hair among us hesitate not. After all, they can afford much better preamble writers than the rest of us.

Those blessed with fewer of the above attributes buttress their courage with a drink and hit the bathroom to comb their thinning hair and practice their fading smiles before taking the metaphorical plunge, although most often the "plunge" turns out to be pratfall.

You and I down half a dozen drinks and hit the head to coax what we can out of our Custer’s Land Stand of a hairline and half-hearted smiles before we venture forth to inevitably crash and burn into the sea.

So at what age does one officially become a dirty old man?

There are no dirty old men really.

There is only all of us - 67 on the outside, 27 in our hearts - trying to make sense of it all without making too big a fool out of ourselves.

Unfortunately to the rest of the world, we resemble troll dolls hitting on Barbie.

And only the best of preamble writers could ever express the most soulful hopes, desires, and dreams of our Inner Ken.    

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