
Not Old But Battle-Hardened
(Fiction) The fluorescent lights of the grocery store cast a sickly pallor on the rows of perfectly stacked cans. I was on a quest for the perfect Dijon mustard, my concentration absolute, when the cashier young kid with a vacant stare, scanned my purchase. “Would you like the senior discount?” he asked, his smile as thin as the receipt paper. I froze. A senior discount? Me? The man who had just finished rebuilding a carburetor in his garage with nothing but a rusty wrench and a stubborn will? The man who’d spent his youth learning to play guitar by figuring out every single Van Halen solo, not by watching a YouTube tutorial? My heart didn’t beat to the rhythm of some easy-listening elevator music; it still pulsed to the beat of a vintage muscle car engine. The word “old” was an insult, a surrender I refused to accept. I wasn’t







