I decided to walk this afternoon by myself. I tried to nap, but couldn’t sleep.

Maria was at her Belly Dancing class, and I was in a funky mood, I didn’t want to walk with any dogs, just me.  That’s unusual.

I took my walking stick, it’s not a cane, I don’t need it, but I just like the feel of it, and the sound of it clacking along the road. I swing it like a baton.  It gives me a sense of solidity, of being grounded.

But it probably looks like a cane, and often out in the pasture where it’s rocky and muddy.

I’ve used one for years.

I went halfway up the hill, then turned around, and as I did, a man pulled up in a big SUV and rolled his window down and leaned over to me.

He looked concerned,  and spoke to me slowly, almost as if I was hard of hearing or slow to grasp what he would be saying.

I was a little broody as I sometimes am after doctor’s visits, I spent the morning at the eye doctor. I didn’t see a doctor for years, and ever since my heart surgery, I see a whole bunch regularly. That’s probably why I am alive, but still, I don’t like it much.

I was surprised when I heard the engine stop, and annoyed. I didn’t want to chat with anybody at the moment. He had a big black Lab in the back seat who was pretending to growl at me, but whose tail was betraying him.

I was preparing for small talk, which I hate and am no good at.

I didn’t recognize the man, but that is not unusual.

A lot of people know me that I don’t remember or know I know. It’s a byproduct of doing all those readings and being on TV. People never forget a voice on the radio or a face from TV. I just smile, wave and say hello, which I started to do…

“Listen,” the man said, looking serious, “there is a lot of glare from the sun up ahead of me, you might want to think of walking on the other side of the street.” At first, I thought I knew him and I wasn’t clear about what he was telling me.

I’ve walked on country roads a million times, nobody has ever warned me about the sun. I mean, don’t I know how to walk?

I asked him about his dog, I just didn’t realize he was talking about the glare on his windshield, and he wasn’t clear. I had been walking pretty deep in thought, looking at my long shadow and wondering, as I sometimes do, who that old man with a walking stick was walking down the road.

It doesn’t look like me, or at least, not the image of the “me” I carry around in my head. The man spoke even more slowly, gesturing up towards the setting sun, and I realized he was just trying to warn me about the side of the road I was walking on, he must not have been able to see me clearly as he drove behind me.

He didn’t want me to get hurt. But it wasn’t until he drove off, that I pieced it together. I must have sounded addled and confused to him, I imagined him shaking his head and wondering if I would make it to the end of the road.

Most people who see me recognize me, I am not famous, but I am pretty well known where I live. And I don’t really look like anyone who is from around here.  I think I just assumed he was somebody who knew me but who I couldn’t place, and I was trying to be polite.

Perhaps I was confused. Perhaps I was really the fuzzy-headed old man he seemed to think I was, in need of watching and protecting.

It was a thoughtful thing of him to do, yet something was bothering me. I was struck by the way he was speaking to me. The people at the Mansion often complain to me that people speak very loudly to them, as if they are deaf, or very slowly as if they are dumb.

I have a friend who is legally blind, and he says that people shout when they talk to him. He keeps having to tell them he isn’t deaf.

I am careful to speak to the residents in my normal voice, and if I have to repeat something, I just get closer and repeat it. I am all right with getting older, I was never good at being young. In so many ways, I’m finally accepting myself, just as Sylvia Plath wrote, as having the right to live on my own human, fallible, terms.

I am both happy and fortunate in my life.  I know I am blessed in many ways.

It is a strange experience for someone to speak to me the way this well-meaning man did, and it makes me wonder at times just how old I am or seem. I have a bit of an old man’s shuffle and have gotten an old man’s belly. My knees tell me  I’m getting older, especially when I walk on concrete for hours.

And sometimes, getting up from a deep and soft chair requires some planning.

The very young techs and the vet will not let me carry bags of dog food out to the door ever since my heart surgery, and people are constantly asking me if I need help to get things I buy out to the car. Young men open doors for me and call me “sir,” like I am some grizzled old veteran.

Nobody asks Maria if they can carry things for her, and I wouldn’t dare.

That’s a big transition for me. I’ve always been the guy who holds doors open and helps older people carry their things out to their cards. I’m the guy who helps, not who needs help.

The man kept repeating his warning, although, in those minutes, he was afraid I didn’t get it. The sun was dipping below the horizon. I wanted to shout at him (I just saw Joker): “Are You Talking To Me?’ just like DiNero did in “Taxi Driver,” and President Trump did to a reporter the other day.

The thing about getting older is that you are always young in your own head, it’s only when you look in a mirror, or see a photograph, or look at your shadow in the setting sun that you are reminded who you are and where you are.

And you get a fleeting glimpse into how other people are beginning to see you.

I was struggling to respond gracefully. He was just being nice, but I didn’t like it.

Striving to be polite, I asked him if he was taking his big sweet Lab to the vet just down the road, and he said he was getting some stitches removed from the dog.

I said goodbye, and before he could warn me again, which he seemed to be cranking up to do, I waved and started walking and shouted over my shoulder, “good luck at the vet, I’ll be sure to be careful.”

I think I realized that I wasn’t really annoyed. I was just embarrassed.