Greeting someone you don’t know or you know only as an acquaintance can be a bit awkward. Say, “Hi” or ‘Hello” is appropriate, but the words suggest the encounter will not be just in passing and will continue even though we know it will not. A nod of the head works well, mostly from a man to another man. To avoid the awkwardness, it’s just easier to make no eye contact and walk on by, but most people are kind and will offer some type of verbal acknowledgment.

Perhaps the most common phrase exchanged is a question. “How are you?” said the man I walked by sitting on his chair at the beach by himself at 6:30 in the morning. The standard answer is “I’m fine, thank you.”

But what if I’m not fine? Imagine this scenario with me and the guy sitting by himself on the beach.

“Good morning,” I say.

“How are you,” he asks.

I stop short. I plop myself down on the sand next to him in his chair. “Since you asked, I’ll tell you how I am. Last night, I drank a little too much and felt a little nauseous. I was up all night. Got maybe an hour’s sleep. I got these restless legs too, you know. Can’t get them to stop twitching when I lie down. No cure, but they gave me medicine for Parkinson’s. It doesn’t help much. I got arthritis too and degeneration of my spine. Collapsed discs and something called stenosis which is a narrowing of the spinal cavity and when that happens the nerves get pinched so I had to get surgery last November because my ulnar nerve was pinched in my neck. It’s the one that runs across your shoulder down your arm and into your hand. Look at my hand. See the big indentation between my thumb and my index finger? That’s because the nerve was pinched and now my hand has atrophy. It’s basically useless so now I have to be left-handed and that ain’t easy.

“So, the surgery was done and the doctor said that if it helps at all, the nerve might take years, maybe even 30 years to heal and bring back the strength in my hand. I told him I ain’t got 30 years, you know? He said go home and squeeze a tennis ball and see if that helps.

“So, the insurance company and the doctor make thousands of dollars on me and I’m home squeezing a tennis ball. I mean what’s wrong with this picture?

“I used to bowl every Tuesday morning. I’m not very good. Carried about a 140 average which ain’t real bad for bowling once a week. But now I can’t roll the ball from my right hand anymore. I mean I can pick it up, you know, but if I tried to swing it behind me, it would fly off and hit something. That wouldn’t be good! So, I have to keep my left hand on top of the ball through my back swing and let it go when I’m rolling it down the lane.

“I bowled an 88. Can you imagine? An 88! The guys feel sorry for me, but I’m real competitive so I’m embarrassed. I’m doing all I can just trying to keep the ball from rolling in the gutter. My buddy said I’m getting my money’s worth. Since I can’t throw strikes, I have to roll two balls every frame. My money’s worth, he says. By the way, we only pay eight bucks for three games because we’re seniors. That includes the shoe rental too. Where you going to get a deal like that? I mean I took my daughter to the movies the other day and the popcorn cost nine bucks for a medium size bag. What a joke!

“Next Wednesday I gotta get shots in my back to help my nerve pain. The freaking needle is about six inches long. Gotta lie on my stomach and they shoot some medicine in my back to numb the area before the big needle goes in. It used to help a lot. Not so much anymore.

“Speaking of needles, I’d rather stick a rusty needle in my eye than do what this neurologist wants to do to me. He wants to go through my front to get to my spine and put in fake discs where there ain’t any. He gotta move my aorta over to get to my spine and he says there’s a one in a hundred chance my aorta could rupture and I’d bleed to death. If I survived that, he’d roll me over and put a rod in my spine with a plate and eight titanium screws. The whole surgery would take 6 hours that’s if I didn’t bleed out in the first three. I told him if the pain gets that bad, I’ll drink a bottle of vodka every night before I ever let him slice and dice me.

“Tough getting old you know. I need a crane to get me off the bed in the morning and then I’m like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. You gotta squirt oil into my joints to get me moving. My hearing ain’t so good anymore either. Don’t bother me as much as it bothers my lady friend. I mean, I hear enough to get by and I figure what I don’t hear, I don’t need to know unless she repeats it a couple of times. So, that’s how it’s been going. I kept my eyes on the ocean tide all the while I spoke.

Then I asked, “So, how are you doing?” I looked to my left and the guy in the chair was gone.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com