Below the dungeon (the boiler room) in the low income hotel that I manage there is a secret hidden hall of records. An account of all who have stayed with us is enshrined in antediluvian scrolls and tablets there. According to those ancient scripts, Peter on the fourth floor is 93 years old. The math says 2025 - 93 = 1932, which, if our archaic system is correct, he would have been born in 1932. According to the “Goog”, “The Korean War started on 25 June 1950 and ended on 27 July 1953” which would make it possible for Peter to have been in the military at that time. He would have been 18 in nineteen fifty.
The first day I saw Peter. I saw this spindly aged man sitting on the stairs that lead into the old basketball gymnasium on the ground level of the hotel. The basketball gym, which is currently being used as a gymnastics center... Peter was midway on the nine cement steps that led up to the platform just outside of the large gym doors, slumped back, cradling a tanning reflector attempting to bounce sunrays onto his white haired age-drooping boobs and face. He was shirtless and saggy. He had great quaffed shock-white pompadour hair with borrowed looks from a Hollywood leading man of the Fifties - perhaps a bit like Kirk Douglas.
We’re kinda funny about how we respond to old people. Mostly we are overly kind to them. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just, “What a nice old man,” has a tendency to crop up when we see old creatures like us (humans) shuffling slowly about the room, always asking us to repeat whatever is said to them with a very common - “Huh?” - requesting that you repeat yourself. As we get old we end up with abundant peculiarities. Peter has hearing aids yet never wears them. I saw Peter one day - I just happened to look up from behind the front desk as he was making his way down the stairs - taking a fall that looked terrible. He mistook the second to the last step to be the last step in/on the stairway, and he took a confused step and fell forward straight, full weight, onto both knees onto the lobby floor. Plunk!, and then he was sitting on both knees. He actually landed directly on both knees. It was a little bit like a gymnast sticking their final position. He remained motionless stuck on both knees wondering what had happened. His face showed no signs of pain, but, rather, simple confusion. He just sat there propped up on his knees with his eyes spinning w/ like cartoon confusion.
“Are you alright, Peter?”
“Yes, I think so.”
I came around through the doors to the lobby so I could assist him. “Do you need help?”
Without hesitation, as though I was sort of bothering him - “give me a second,” he responded. I waited. And then after a minute or two he said, “Okay” and lifted his right hand indicating I should help him to his feet.
“Are you sure?” I tentatively asked.
Peter nodded and I slowly lifted him to his feet.
Once standing Peter did an evaluation on the damage done. He tilted his head down, then up, his eyes rolled a bit, seeming to search his brain like a relic computer, then he spit out, “Well, not too bad.”
“I can get you a chair.”
“No need. Just give me a second and then I can go over there and sit.” He pointed to a chair in the lobby.
After a moment he instructed me to help shuffle him into that chair.
Peter sat. He looked a bit glazed over. “Do you want me to call 911?”
“No.”
But I felt he was wrong, “I’m calling 911.” And I called. They came out. Peter chose not to go with them. They left. He sat in that chair for two hours. He looked mildly distressed in that time, if at all. Since he was wearing shorts I could see bruises beneath both knee caps develop. Ultimately He stood and slowly made his way over to the stairs. I asked if he needed any help. “No.” he responded softly, yet certain. “No.” Then he returned to his room.
Peter was a jet pilot in the Korean War. He once told me a story about how he and his fellow pilots would often fly over the Chinese border and drop bombs on the planes/jets that were there at that Chinese air base. Destroying assets of the Chinese Air Force without permission from the United States military. “We weren’t supposed to do that of course, officially that is, but, we used to do that.”
Off point, I asked him how many confirmed kills he had. He told me he had 3.
One day he was coming out of the hotel as I was passing on my way home on my motorcycle. “Be careful on that thing,” Peter shouted at me over the noise of my vehicle. Without missing a beat I shouted back, “Said the man who flew jets in war!” To my suprise Peter’s last thought on the subject was - “Yea, but I wouldn’t do it again!” (He shouted to me as I pulled away.) The next day I asked what he meant by “Wouldn’t do that again,” and he said that it was “very dangerous and a crazy that a kid from a farm in Iowa ended up in charge of such a large machine.”
Most everyone is impressed with Peter. The mantra is - “What a cool old guy.” Except from me. With me he argues. Irrationally. (Regardless, I have a tendency to be fond of people who argue with me.) He has a dresser in his tiny room. On that dresser is a coffee maker. The dresser is made out of particle board, or pressed board, with a thin formica veneer. The coffee maker has leaked out over the top of that dresser for many years. Most of the backside of that dresser is partially crumbled due to deterioration because of the coffee spill. It’s holding in place, or holding together, yet if you took a pencil you could press the point right through the weakening material. It’s rotting in place. Roaches love water and can live off glue. Pressed board is heated and glued. Peter’s been slowly creating the most fantastic roach house with every pot of coffee he has brewed over the past twenty years of living at the hotel.
Peter doesn’t particularly like roaches. Or, bedbugs, but on this day he came down to complain about his roach farm and requested I have the exterminator out for the 4th time in two and a half months.
“No, Peter.” I responded, and before I got to my second sentence he interrupted my flow.
“You will spray my room!” I would note he was indignant and spoke to me like I was a servant. Old guy or not - not nice. I mean, I expressed my reasons about how he’d been fostering his roach buddies for years and he would have to get rid of his dresser before I would spend any more of the hotel budget on spraying his room. He argued and insisted - “You will spray my room!”
On another subject, Peter always complains to me. About everything. It is because he has nothing else to talk to me about. One time I was scrubbing a floor which ended up having feces on it (for whatever unknown reason), Peter, in typical fashion, came into that bathroom pointed to a sink and instructed me that it wasn’t working correctly. Without stopping from cleaning the floor I asked - “Did you fill out a work order?” Peter pointed at me with some gusto and further instructed me, demanding - “Well I’m telling you right now!” We argued. Eventually I asked him why he just always blurted out complaints - that he never just said hello or how are you doing, always a complaint? He didn’t really understand what I was asking.
“And another thing Peter, I’m in the middle of doing something. I don’t think it’s right that you're barking at me while I’m cleaning up. Please just fill out a work order.” He told me he thought that having to fill out work orders was silly and he huffed off as quickly as a 90 year plus person can huff.
Well, I felt bad that a couple days before I told Peter that I wouldn’t spray his room until he got rid of his decomposing dresser, so, I grabbed some harris bed bug spray (bed bug spray kills roaches, roach spray does not kill bed bugs so I was doubling down on any bug issue that Peter might be having) and I went up offering to spray his room for bugs, that I wouldn’t pay for the exterminator, but I would attempt to rectify his roach problem through my efforts.
I knocked on his door. I knocked again. And, again. After a couple minutes he opened the door. He saw the bug spray container in my hand.
“Are you here to spray?”
“Yes, but you have to agree to getting rid of this dresser. Which is the cause of the problem,” and then we argued for five to ten minutes without a resolution. Fatigued, with the rigidity that an old man can display stubbornness, I started spraying. We argued more as I sprayed. Still I could not get Peter to commit to letting me replace his dresser. “Alright. Fine. Let’s be done with all that!” (meaning, let’s stop arguing about how you’ve caused the roach farm in/with your dresser because you let coffee spill all over it’s backside for years.)
I calmly sat on Peter’s bed.
“What are you doing?” Peter quietly asked.
“I need to ask you something.”
His vehemence turned soft. Befuddlement took hold.
I continued. “Sit down.”
Peter reluctantly sat on the bed. There was a distance between us. “So I gotta ask.”
He spoke in a soft voice. “What?”
“What’s your plan?”
He was confused by my question. “What?”
“Your plan?”
“What do you mean?”
A gentle laugh accompanied my statement - “Well, Peter, you are getting a bit older now and I was wondering what you are planning to do.”
Peter still did not get what I was asking.
“Where are you going to go when you can no longer take care of yourself?”
“What” He responded quizzically. He turned his head left, then right, both eyes slightly spinning, then pulled his chin to his neck putting an end to all head movement. “What do you mean?”
“You gotta know one day you’re most likely not going to be able to care for yourself. What is your plan on that day?”
Peter unpinned his chin from his neck and in the most relaxed manner I had ever seen him in he responded with, “What?” He was looking at me like I had asked the dumbest question he had ever heard in his 90 year plus life and then he generously answered - “I’m going to die right here!”
Alright. At least I have my answer.
I’m happy to report. Peter is still with us. He is still generously nurturing a roach farm in his room. And, from time to time he still argues with me for no reason and complains almost daily.
Additional information: You can find out more about the author at JohnReneaud.com