Two Old Friends

They were two old friends, and they decided to meet each day in the park.

The park was not far from Stanley’s house, where he had lived his whole adult life. When his children were small, they would go down on Sunday afternoons, around the time his wife couldn’t stand them in the house anymore. Back then, the playground had been one of those old metal ones, that burned your hands in the summer and did the same in the winter. The parks department had since updated it, with what seemed like a more modern design. Lots of synthetic nets to climb on, new plastic slides and these green, sloping vine-like structures that seemed to grow out of the ground. The playground did seem nicer, and safer, but Stanley missed the old one.

The two old friends would sit on the bench across from the playground, watching the children play with their parents, or more likely, their nannies, as Stanley had noticed the mothers these days wanted to spend their time at the office rather than with their children. He mentioned this observation to Robert, for which his only reply was, “Good for them.”

Stanley wasn’t sure what to make of this comment. Robert didn’t usually share his opinions, or talk much about himself, and seemed fine to just listen to what Stanley had to say. Which was probably why they had been friends for so long. Instead of asking Robert what he meant, Stanley let it go and enjoyed watching the young children run and play. The children themselves didn’t seem too concerned about who was minding them or why their mothers had decided to spend all day in the office, and instead were just enjoying the playground. Stanley wondered if his grandkids would like spending time at this park the same as their parents once did.

He mentioned this thought to Robert. He expected a question in response, like, “What would you think they’d like the most?”, which would give him the chance to talk as long as he pleased about grandkids hanging off the nets, or sliding down the slides, or pretending those strange green vine-like things were giant beanstalks.

Instead, Robert responded: “I’m not sure we should be sitting here.”

It was a bright, sunny day, where you could feel the crisp of autumn coming in on the wind, if you sat and waited long enough. These were Stanley’s favorite kind of days, right in the middle of a changing season. Stanley was watching a power struggle play out between a child who wanted to stay and a nanny who insisted that they must leave. The child was winning.

“Why do you say that? We come here every day and sit. Hasn’t been a problem yet.”

Robert nodded towards the playground. “Think of it from their perspective. Two old men, here every day, sitting and watching. Might be a little unsettling, don’t you think?”

So, they decided to move over to the bench by the pond and watch the ducks instead. Stanley began bringing some old bread, trying to coax the ducks their way. The ducks would dart over to the little eddy next to the bench, through the tall reeds, grab whatever pieces Stanley had thrown and then immediately leave. They’d never linger, even though they knew Stanley to be a reliable source of bread. It saddened him a bit, that the ducks wouldn’t stick around.

One day, Robert asked Stanley why he kept bringing bread to feed the ducks.

“Well, I can’t seem to finish a loaf before it goes stale, now that Shirley’s gone.” He didn’t like talking about her, and his friend never asked about it all, out of respect, Stanley figured, or maybe just because he didn’t care to talk about the past.

“No, that’s not what I mean.” They both watched the ducks dart in and dart back out towards the full expanse of the pond. “You aren’t supposed to feed ducks. It’s not good for them. It makes them depend on humans for food, and then if you stop showing up, they won’t know how to get their own food.”

“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to keep coming here with bread each day, won’t we?”

Robert just smiled and reached out to give a reassuring squeeze to Stanley’s shoulder.

Stanley didn’t want to hurt the ducks, and he didn’t like how ungrateful they seemed, anyways, so he stopped with the bread. That’s when he and Robert started to take walks through the park. Usually, they’d go on the path around the pond - where Stanley had taught his son and daughter to ride bikes - but sometimes they’d just wander through the open fields that made up most of the park. Not really going anywhere, just walking.

That’s when the jokes started. Stanley knew his old friend was fond of riddles and puzzles, which weren’t Stanley’s thing so much, but the jokes were new. “Jokes” was probably not the right word - more puns than anything else.

“Got a new one today for you, my friend,” Robert said as they walked, shoulder to shoulder, up and over a slight hill at the edge of the park. “Came up with it last night and couldn’t wait to tell you. You ready for it?”

Stanley nodded.

“What are clothes’ favorite month?”

Stanley thought. “I don’t know, what?”

“Janu-WEAR-y.” He looked to Stanley expectantly, searching his face for any reaction.

Stanley couldn’t help but chuckle. As soon as he broke a smile, Robert gave a big grin. “Pretty good one, huh?” Stanley had to agree it was.

Their days had become somewhat solitary, as solitary as two old friends meeting at a park could be, but the jokes changed all that. Stanley had never seen his friend so animated by anything before. Each day, he’d come with a few to tell him, and he took Stanley’s reactions to the jokes very seriously. He seemed committed to the craft.

Stanley wondered if he should come up with his own and contribute something. Shirley had been more of the conversationalist in the relationship, and Robert was really the only person he would talk to about anything. But Stanley wasn’t one for jokes and figured he had taken up enough of his old friend’s time over the years. Maybe it was time for him to listen. If Robert wanted to tell jokes, then jokes it would be.

For a while, it was pun after pun. “How do you get pasta into space? On a flying SAUCE-r.” “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it was late for his shift at the CLUCK-tory.” Then they advanced to different structures and forms. They had a good thing going for a few days with some Catskill call-and-response that Stanley quite enjoyed.

“Last week, my wife, she got so mad at me.”

“How mad was she?” Stanley responded, trying to work out the punchline in his own head.

“Well, I’ll tell you, that night, the couch slept on me!”

Robert finally got good enough - at least in his own opinion - to try out some more observational humor.

“Have you tried these medicine bottles they have these days? They call the lids ‘child proof.’ ‘Child proof.’ Takes me all morning to get my pills out, some days. All these things are proving is that I’m dumber than a kid!”

Robert would laugh, and Stanley would too, not at the lame jokes, but at his friend’s giddiness. Stanley had known Robert for as long as he could remember, but he never remembered Robert enjoying something as much as he seemed to enjoy those jokes. Stanley was grateful to see his old friend in this new way. Up to that point, Robert had been mostly a constant, familiar presence in his life, and they didn’t need to say much to understand each other. Except for that cold afternoon when Shirley went away, of course.

As they kept up their walks, and autumn came on strong, Stanley let him get away with more and more “groaners,” as he’d call them. Soon though, it seemed as Robert was slipping a bit. The jokes seemed to take on a form of logic that only made sense to him.

“I saw my ex-wife the other day, I took one look at her and she tripped right back into my arms.”

“If you get mice in your house, don’t worry about it. Put out a bit of salt, a bit of sugar, and let them fight over the grains until everything’s sorted out.”

“What’s the best way to make a cake? Mix the batter, stick it in the oven, and then wait until the house burns down.”

The jokes became more gruesome as the days went on. Still, Stanley didn’t say anything. He probably would have mentioned the strangeness to Shirley, if he could have, to see what she thought of it all.

“When is a porcupine not a porcupine? When it’s in the bear’s stomach!”

“What’s more fun than vomiting in the toilet? Vomiting everywhere!”

“A man and a woman walk straight into a bar. It hits her in the forehead; he’s in a coma for three weeks. The bartender can’t live with himself, so he sticks the bar right down his throat.”

Eventually, though, the jokes became too painful for Stanley. He wasn’t offended, or shocked, really. He had lived a long life and heard and seen much worse. It was his friend’s voice that made it hard to listen. He wasn’t sure if his voice changed, or if it was just that he hadn’t ever heard Robert talk this much. His way of speaking, and his laugh, especially, started to grate on Stanley’s ears. The laugh was more of a cackle, Stanley realized, one day as they made their way out of the park and back home.

Robert stopped looking for reactions from Stanley. It didn’t seem as if he cared. They would meet at the entrance to the park, in between the wrought iron gates that were open from sunup to sundown. The jokes would come as soon as they started walking, with not even a pause in between to give space for the potential laugh from Stanley that wasn’t coming. The jokes became an onslaught, a barrage of rapid-fire nonsense that Stanley couldn’t escape as he walked the loop of the park.

“I see you have a pumpkin, let’s jump in the lake. One rock said to the other rock, why don’t we get out of here and head to the ocean? You see that man over there; I think he’s trying to tell us something. It’s probably nothing but may as well take his wallet to be sure. If you were trapped in a closet, how would you let yourself out? I’d break down the door, but I’d bet you’d try the handle first.”

Stanley made a decision. The jokes needed to stop. The good memories of the park, with his children on the old playground, with him walking hand-in-hand with Shirley on those last days, were being drowned out by his old friend’s jokes. Even after they parted for the day, passing through the entrance gate with its metal spikes, he could hear the jokes in his head, running on a constant loop. When he got home, it would continue, like he had fallen into a stream of consciousness with nothing but the jokes. He didn’t know if they were the ones he had heard that day, or jokes that were to come, or if his brain had started to create its own without Stanley knowing.

His old friend must have sensed a change in Stanley because the day after he decided to put an end to it, he was not waiting at their usual spot in the park, by the gate. Stanley waited and wondered if he was not going to come. He walked into the park and noticed him sitting at the bench, by the lake, where they used to feed the ducks.

Stanley walked over to the bench and stood at the end. His friend was sitting on the other side, back straight, staring out into the water. Stanley couldn’t see any ducks.

“Why don’t you have a seat, my old friend?”

“Before I do, I need to tell you something…” Stanley paused, trying to remember his friend’s name. He had forgotten it.

The friend didn’t turn to look at Stanley, but just patted the bench next to him. “Take a seat. I have another joke for you.”

“I don’t think I can hear another…” The friend patted the bench again and an overwhelming dizziness overtook Stanley, like he had just twirled around in a circle, over and over and over. He sat down, almost falling to the bench, and his head stopped spinning. He turned to look at his friend, trying to remember his name. His hair seemed darker, more black than usual. Although maybe it had always been this black and Stanley just never noticed. Or had it been brown?

“I think you’ll like this one. I promise. It’s a good one.”

Stanley didn’t respond and the old friend started his joke:

“Two old friends have decided to go on a trip together. It was a trip they had been talking about for a very long time. When they were younger, they would tell each other all of the amazing things they would do and see, but as they got older, they realized they had to stop talking about the trip and actually go on the trip. They agree on the day they will leave. When that day comes, the one friend goes to the other friend’s house. He knocks on the door. The other friend opens the door and says:

‘I’m sorry. I can’t leave today. I still need to pack. I’m missing a few things.’

The first friend is a little annoyed, but not surprised. This other friend was not good at planning and has a hard time following through on commitments.

‘Can I help? Is there anything you need?’

‘Well, the one thing I need is some food for the journey. I don’t want to get hungry.’

The friend says he’ll get some snacks and come back tomorrow. Then they’ll leave. When he comes back the next day, he knocks on the door and the other friend comes and the first friend shows the food he’s brought.

‘Are you ready to go?’ the friend asks, expectantly.

‘No, I’m sorry, there are still a few things I need before I’m ready.’ The first friend says again that he can help get whatever he needs. The other friend says that he now needs a jacket, to keep him warm. So, the friend returns the next day with the jacket and asks:

‘Are you ready to go?’ and the other friend says no once again that he needs something else. This time, it’s a flashlight, to light their way on the journey. The friend returns the next day with a flashlight and asks:

‘Are you ready to go?’ But once again the other friend apologies and says no, he needs one more thing. He promises that this is the last thing and then he will be ready to go. The first friend says, ‘Ok, tell me what this last thing is, and I’ll get it for you and then we can leave.’

The other friend tells him he needs a picture frame, to keep a picture of his family protected on their travels. So, being a good friend, he returns the next day with the picture frame and says:

‘I’ve brought you food so you don’t get hungry, I brought you a jacket to keep you warm, I brought you a flashlight so we can see, and I’ve brought this picture frame to protect your memories. Are you ready to go?’

The other friend cannot look his old friend in the eye: ‘Well, I’ve only just realized something. There is actually one more thing I need.’

The first friend tries to hold in his frustration. ‘What is it you need now?’

The other friend looks up with a big smile: ‘Some luggage.’”

Stanley’s old friend turns to him and gives a big wide smile, just like the friend who doesn’t want to leave. Stanley notices that behind friend’s teeth, there is no tongue, or mouth, or anything but a black emptiness. Stanley stares into this small abyss contained within his old friend. He breathes deeply to try and stop his heart from beating faster. His doctor has told him he shouldn’t get too excited. It’s bad for his health.

Stanley’s old friend notices him staring into his mouth and quickly closes it.

They both turn back to look out into the lake. A slight breeze comes through the reeds, and as it washes over him, Stanley can feel the winter coming within the wind. He realizes there are no children playing at the playground today. Stanley takes a deep breath of the cold air.

“You know, you look a lot younger than I expected,” Stanley says.

“Many people think that.”

His old friend continues to stare ahead but brings up his arm to give a squeeze to Stanley’s shoulder. “Thank you for bringing me here. It really is a lovely park. Most don’t want to show me something like this.”

Stanley lets the tears roll down his cheeks.

“Are you ready to go?”

Stanley nods. The two old friends stand up and walk, shoulder to shoulder, up and over the small hill at the edge of the park.