Roger

Roger had just turned 85 and had decided against adopting either of the obvious stereotypes- grumpy old man or strange smelly old man- instead settling on a hard-to-place accent and Botox. The accent would add an air of mystique and the Botox would give him fuller, rounder lips something he had always wanted since he was a thin-lipped rapscallion burning ants with a magnifying glass.

For many years, Roger had been a method actor engrossing himself in his characters and living the parts off-stage. This involved living the life of an angry mail carrier battling gout, a cab driver who wove intricate and tell-all stories about all of the local hotshot librarians and a flamboyant hair dresser who had a huge collection of belts and used only the best hair gels mostly to hide his receding hair line. Each role usually lasted 6 months to a year but once he was trapped in a really successful play and was forced to live the life of curmudgeonly stamp collector with horrible dandruff for 4 years and was finally freed when the theatre was purchased by a Chinese businessman who converted it into a jello factory. His final role was the part he was born to play - it was the story of a modern day superhero who had renounced all of his powers and decided to move to Idaho to grow potatoes only to fall in love with the slaughterhouse owner's daughter. Why he had been born to play that role was always beyond him - he always silently questioned his mother's total reliance and belief in all things Ouija.

Roger had made his fortune designing fashionable wigs in a time when the bottom had nearly dropped out of the wig industry. Then he lost all of his money investing in the wrong IBM - a friend had strongly suggested investing in IBM and he had thrown all of his savings at this startup, making a monumental mistake buying stock in Intrepid Bison Movers who went under as bison numbers dropped radically when it was discovered how surprisingly tasty they were. Then he made it back playing blackjack only to lose it alll in the tomato blight of '72. He cursed his decision to use his 7 acre property completely for growing tomatoes and also his lack of understanding of the definition of the word blight (up till that time when people said "beware the blight" he always felt that there was just something wrong with them). He was forced to spend the rest of his working years digging graves for medium-sized rodents just as his father had predicted.

Roger starts each day eating a huge bowl of yogurt, a liter of juice, some whole frozen bananas and some blueberries. He then jumps around for a while after - sort of like a smoothie. "It will be a cold day in hell before I give any of my hard earned money to those jerks at the blender store" he'd say. His friends would often start to remind him that there was no blender store, but this was easily the most tolerable rant in his repertoire so they let it go. It was much better than his disdain for the losers who make up the dental hygienist union with their communist desire for everyone to have such white teeth. He also ranted on a regular basis about chicken fat.

He sat at his kitchen table remembering his youth. So many memories involving shampoo - his dad was a key cog down at the shampoo processing plant, his mother believed that shampoo-based home remedies could cure almost any ailment, and the gang of older boys that terrorized the neighbourhood shampooed him against his will on three separate occasions. He also fondly remembered washing his dog Cha Cha in the backyard and ending up covered in an intoxicating combination of shampoo bubbles, dog hair and hemp (his older brother was planning to open up a top-secret rope import/export business out of the garage).

Since he was a teenager he had only used figures of speech when he had become upset. His mother always taught to be good mannered, respect your elders and to avoid all symbolic speech if at all possible. Roger always found this easy until he lost his cool and then he couldn't help himself. The figures of speech started out as overly simple and obvious, like comparing a plane to a big bird or a particularly hairy man crawling in the park to a bear, but as he became more and more upset the figures of speech get stranger and more confusing. Once he compared his worsening mood to an oak tree and another time he claimed he was so frustrated he wanted to "scatter some gravel." Over the years, instead of getting a handle on describing these mood swings, his figures of speech became even harder to understand. After a particularly tough day at work he was "as unhappy as a German nun when her dinner guests did not want a second helping of her store-bought flan". And he infamously stated to the audience upon receiving his honourary certificate from the local community college that his one main regret in life was not learning to fox trot and it made him feel "as disappointed as a quantitative research scientist who only ate goat cheese on Saturdays when he realized that his bow tie was falling out of fashion." While his friends and family wanted him to be more literal and understandable, he was never dull to be around. 

Roger really enjoyed performances of all types - from human and rehearsed to inanimate and improvised and all varieties in between (except for shows featuring domesticated house pets as he felt they were pedantic and superficial). When something was bad he was viscerally angry but when something was good he became so overjoyed that he literally painted his neighbourhood red (actually it was only partially red, as he ran out and had to use some burgundy and burnt ochre). One time he clapped non-stop for 10 straight minutes after a grade 1 thanksgiving performance that was only adequate at best. Another time he wept uncontrollably after watching himself watch the news in the mirror. While his doctor claimed his ears were pristine, he once tried to use his eyes to operate all of his senses while watching a matinee which led to much confusion about the plot, characters and setting - it also led to the end of a relationship when he responded to her query about what he thought about the movie saying that "it tasted bland."

Maintaining relationships was always tough for Roger. He never knew when to laugh or cry or make lunch. Once he made some toast for a girlfriend when all she wanted was a pat on the shoulder- it was excellent toast but that was totally beside the point. He was not without trying- he read books on relationships, went to seminars and would sit on park benches intensely analyzing couples sitting next to him sketching their facial expressions and charting their moods. He once thought he has made a breakthrough after watching a couple enjoy an intimate picnic when he believed he found a direct correlation between the total number of freckles and the ability to read each other's thoughts but he was wrong (they were a deaf couple who loved Greek salad). Another girlfriend once asked him "do you even know my brain?" He sat there, startled, unsure what to say- so he said nothing and returned to his usual Saturday afternoon activity- trying to solve logic puzzles using both irrational thoughts and emotion. After she had left he wished he had spent more time with her brain...he once had a vivid and happy dream which took place on the sunny and stunning French Riveria, just him and her brain. But alas, she was gone and she had predictably taken her brain. Roger spent many of his later years alone, which, while quite lonely, gave him a lot of time to weave tapestries and make wax statues - neither of which he enjoyed in the slightest. "At least I have my health, my new mysterious and hard-to-place accent and my sumptuous lips! Things are looking up! Now if only I had a some sour candies and a slinky."