And The Old Man Said...

   The handle of the door that led into the small bar almost got away from him thanks to a sudden gust of frigid wind just as he pulled the door open. The few occupants of the place all threw him shut-the-damn-door glares as he stepped into the joint while stamping his feet.

   Though he only had to walk 25 feet or so from where he parked to the bar's entrance, he felt as if he'd just made his way through a full-on blizzard. He shook the dusting of snow off his jacket then walked up to an empty barstool and took a seat.

   The bartender, who all the regulars knew as Sammy but who always wore a name tag that said her name was Sharon, took his order with a smile and had it in front of him quickly. He grunted an acknowledgement of the service and gestured for her to keep the entire fiver for the $4.50 drink.

   The kid had been a regular for going on three years now, and he had yet to address the bartender as either Sammy or Sharon. He hadn't ever bothered to learn the names of any other employees of the bar or any of the other regulars, either. 

   The employees had all been pleasant to him, as they were all service industry veterans and that's just what they do. The other regulars all gave him his space, as that was what they did.

   Both the employees and regulars had taken to referring to him as "The Kid," when it was necessary to refer to him for whatever reason, as he was by far the youngest person that ever came into the place.

   That was as close to a nickname as he'd ever had, and that was possibly the one and only thing he could remember that made him feel as if he was a part of something. It's what kept him coming back. It was a very, very thin thread of connectivity, but it was more than he'd found anywhere else.

   He took a few deep sips then set the glass down and sullenly stirred the ice while staring at the crackled lacquered top of the decades old recycled shuffleboard bartop.

   Two barstools over, the regular all the other regulars referred to as the "Old Man" sat reading the paper. 

   In three years the old man and the kid had never once spoken to each other. Tonight, the old man decided he was going to change that.

   "Smile," the old man said in the direction of the kid. "Things could be so much worse."

   And the kid thought to himself, "Yeah, I could end up like you."

   With an odd smile the old man continued, "You could have extra toes on each foot, make finding a good pair of shoes a nightmare, or you could be missing a thumb on your favored hand, makes a chore out of grabbing a beer."

   The kid looked at the old man and wondered what he was getting at, or if he was getting at anything at all.

   "Or maybe you coulda lost your nuts to cancer...you gotta admit that it's easy to be happy thinking that hasn't happened, eh? Yeah, I saw a smile creep in there...no nut cancer, that's one that most every man can smile about."

   The kid sat quietly and politely, stirring the ice melting in his glass.

   "Yep," the old man said after a sip on his drink, "there is so much to either be happy you don't have or happy you do have. I mean, have you ever wondered what it would be like living in a meth-head infested abandoned trailer park in north Las Vegas? Oh sure, probably better than being homeless, but probably not by much, at least not in my book."

   The kid turned toward him and the old man flashed a smiling grin featuring mostly artificial teeth, which just about made the kid want to get up and walk away, but he didn't. The kid kept his seat, whether out of actual interest or respect for the man, or just plain old- fashioned good manners.

   After a few minutes of silence, the kid stopped playing with the ice in his glass and said, "Now, I'm not trying to be rude here Mister, but what would you know about hard times? What would you know about suffering from anything? I've seen the car you drive, I've seen how much you tip these girls here for bringing you a drink. You got money man, you got it made. You don't have to worry about where your next meal is coming from or none of the other crap most of us worry about every single day."

   The old man looked straight at the kid, then pushed his stool back from the bar as if to leave. He then reached down and slipped off his weird shoes and started to pull off his socks.

   The kid looked down at the old man's feet and saw that he had six toes on each foot. Then the old man took off his right glove and showed the kid his thumb-less hand.

   He looked at the drink one of the girls set down in front of him and smiled, then quipped, "You're just going to have to take my word for it that my nuts were snipped off, I'm not dropping trou in here to prove that to you."

   "As for my former residence in the city built by losers...what, you think I got this set of pearly whites from ol' Mother nature? These are what you get if you're lucky enough to break free from a meth addiction and get your life back together."

   The kid took the old man's display of deformities and reconstructed teeth in for a good long minute and swore under his breath.

   "Damn," he said, "How...how the hell did you do it?"

   "Not by myself kid, not by myself."