Simple Pleasures

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: This story must contain the words: closet, walking stick, paste

Simple Pleasures

It’s going to be a hot one today, Sam thought reaching into the closet. His hat, old and worn about the edges, waited for him patiently on the upper shelf. You and me, we make quite a pair, he said to the fedora before placing it on his head. He would need it to keep from burning since the last trace of scalp hair had left him decades before.

His home away from home, a park bench under a large shade tree, was occupied today. He felt like kicking the young couple off but only for a moment. They would just laugh at him. There was no respect for the old. 

There was a time when things were different. He had been young once. Back then, they had treated the elders with respect. Memories of when he was young flooded through his mind. Maybe I don’t remember what I had for breakfast, but I remember what it was like to spend the summer barefoot.

Sam shuffled around the small town’s main street. His walking stick, more of a cane really, helped him up over some of the harder terrain; curbs and such. He hated that stick. It was a constant reminder of how old and feeble he was.

“You are as young as you feel!”

That’s what it said. Sam stood in front of the store window looking at the book with the implied promise of youth. Inside, he flipped through the pages and saw, “Do something you remember doing as a child.”

Why not? he thought. Maybe he would feel young again.

That night, as everyone slept, Sam pulled the bag from under his bed and reached inside. The applicator top unscrewed, just like he remembered. Then, for the first time in almost a century, Tom ate some paste.”