The Kids Today With Their Rock 'n' Roll And Long Hair... [2014WC]

As I close my eyes and feel my systems close down, I quietly thank the body that
has taken me to this point. Ninety-Three years old... not a bad innings -as they say
in cricket circles.
This far and no further.
The kid who ran through the meadows and felt life course surge through his lean
body, the teenager that laughed at death and scaled the dizzy heights of 'Deadman's
Bridge' and the young man that fell in love with the old woman now crying at his
bedside. That fair-haired guy in the movie -Bladerunner said it right.

But it's the coffin I'm worried about, that box that will keep me for eternity. Will
I sleep-the-sleep of the dead or will my eyelids flutter and I awake into total numb
darkness?
She'd better burn me, we agreed on that.

There are Doctors and a Nurse leaning over me and I guess this is the last step before
I blink out of existence. I read in a magazine once where a woman who came back from
the dead said she could see her loved ones whilst the machines told everyone that
she'd gone. That's what this is, I'm not quite dead, but there's no way back.
Twenty-minutes from now, the kids will be urging their Mother to divide the money up...
so much for family love.

That's it, open my lids and look inside... I've gone, moved on to wherever they place us
old bastards, that little so-and-so next door can now get away with kicking his ball against
my garage door... damned kids.

You know... they don't know they're born -today, honestly. These kids have mobile phones,
computers and the int-er-net, when I was a lad we had to do with what you could imagine.
None of these new-fangled devices and fast cars to school.

There's a light appeared on the off-white ceiling tiles, I saw it when Dr. Brady moved his
head... strange? Mabel is still sniffing in her Kleenex and nobody else seems to have
noticed it. They should get a Electrician to look at that.

Yep, the kids today have got it lucky. Always hankering for attention and they leave
their bedrooms like a bomb has gone off. In my day, you would get the belt from Pa
for doing such a thing. My Father was an Electrician for forty years and never took a day
-off sick, he'd have fixed that light in a jiffy.
Oh wait a minute, It's a... it's a...

My pudgy fingers move infront of my eyes and the grinning woman that's saying
something to me is just as pudgy, but I'm on my feet -I think.
I smell of talcum-powder, I smell of drying blood and talcum-powder... and it's
cold. The room lights are far-too bright and the heating should be looked at, damned
Government cut-backs.

Oh no... I'm small, I'm small and wee -as Jimmy Cruckshank used to say at the Bowling
Alley... small and wee, small and I've urinated myself. Another thing Jimmy did once.
If I can tell this woman my name, then maybe she'll ring Mabel for me. Wow, is she in
for a surprise!

But nobody is listening, no one is... "HEH! I'm naked over here!"
More looming faces and silly noises, can't I get anyone's attention?