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They are, no one denies it, mysterious and unapproachable, our elders, but by god with your help we’ll exploit if not respect their datatroves. Hello latecomers. There’s room down front. May I present to you, in a single meatbag, a salvageable stockpile of chess strategy, secondary math, and typography, if I’m saying the word right, not that anyone cares: let’s welcome Mister Oldman, whose successful transcriber will likely be promoted.

Mister Oldman you’re a sweet old man
and we’ll all be sweet of course
when our business is done
and our grandkids don’t come
and our days are as empty as yours. 

Welcome, MO. My you are brittle residual and aromatic aren’t you? And deaf as a stump. No need to answer. Yesterday a man your age would have been devoured by predators, terminated by virus. Today nothing kills you. But the foundations you chair, sir, are lusty loaded and plunderable. We’ve taken a good look. Now, we don’t expect you to fall on your sword, sir, you prefer to obsolesce like the rest of us, but here’s the thing, your firmware won’t update. No it’s not a voltage disparity. Your gyroscope is losing speed, MO, you absorb energy with diminishing returns. Understand? Just nod. Don’t strain your neck please. It’s the last of its type. You don’t learn, MO, and what you know is fading, so we’ve asked you to mentor. We’ve gathered candidates to digitize your unverifiable memories of learning both chess and Euclid from your beloved granny. Candidates please present yourselves, and let’s help our esteemed elder produce Essence of Oldman in popular optical formats. With luck, Mister Oldman, your work will be the go-to guide for making fixed-size fonts of movable type from lead ingots. Just sign here, here, here, and once for the foundation.

Original Copyright © February 17, 2007
Revised Copyright © February 12, 2026

When I was going-on-six we nearly blew up the railroad station. By my birthday, we’d managed it. I only know because it’s gone. The rest, including these scars, is fog in the attic. Back then we got explosives easier than rum. The ten-year-olds figured out how to render the volatile agent from unexploded land mines in boiling water and pack it into cakes they could ignite with an improvised fuse, knowledge I had to earn with heroics. That I remember like a verse. A stand of birch trees loomed like soldiers to our West. We chopped them down with submachine guns cleaner than chainsaws. The woods we defended were chunky with abandoned munitions. Once gathered and sorted, to keep them from rivals, we stowed them under floorboards in a shed outside barracks that were once a country church. We’d meet after school, grab arms, wrestle with their rusty actions, and hike down to the tracks. Grenades were for kids with all their fingers, but I had my own Uzi and a Colt sidearm nobody else wanted with plenty of bullets. If we’d been school shooters, the mothers would have wailed about who armed the killer instead of where he got his motivation. We played with the toys we were given. For the freight station exercise, the older boys set blast cakes beneath the stationmaster’s desk and laid a powder trail as a fuse. They wouldn’t let me see. Survivors say I took it badly, that I fired into the treetops, that something crashed through the branches, that it thudded onto the roof. They wouldn’t let me see. Next they say I threw my pistol to the ground, a round discharged, another thud. Again I demanded to see. But then the blast. Then here. Then now. Wherever whenever this is.

Original Copyright © February 13, 2007
Revised Copyright © February 07, 2026

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  1. davidbdale's avatar

    This is a close relative of a Very Short Novel titled Short for Family from 20 years ago. The revisions…

  2. davidbdale's avatar

    This is a close relative of a Very Short Novel titled Red Water from 30 years ago. It's different enough,…

  3. grantman's avatar

    Interesting piece which touches on many aspects of getting old especially the part where we don't fit anymore. Having worked…

  4. davidbdale's avatar
  5. davidbdale's avatar

    This is a close relative of an early post titled Something Delicious from 20 years ago. This revised version is different enough,…

Behind the Pseudonym

The pen name davidbdale honors my mother Beatrice (Bea) and my father Dale

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