The Stroke and the Old Bastard (12/12/2025)
I will always remember my older neighbor when I was a kid. Why? He was a miserable bastard. He was a bastard to his kids, wife, family and even the neighbors. My parents always said, "Pay no attention to him" as they knew he was a bastard.
We lived on a dead-end street with a gully at the end. It was an entry point into the ocean and ran at the end of 7 streets which created a huge playground for the neighborhood kids. We could build forts, play in the shallow streams with paper boats and it was a blast.
Our street didn’t have much traffic except for the ones living there so we could ride our bikes, play street 2 hand touch football and baseball. Our biggest fan was the old bastard who would yell at us for using his sidewalk.
"Get off my lawn!", "Get your bikes off my sidewalk!" and a few curse words in between.
He was the only one that yelled at us. We had one of the last remaining neighborhoods where you can run and play through the area. There were fences that separated property line but those didn’t stop us as we were everywhere. We would play Capture the Flag and use everyone’s yard (except for the old bastard’s), and they were cool if they saw us in their yards (we mostly were running through them).
The biggest draw to the old bastard’s home was a sweet jump that was right in front of his enclosed porch where he would sit and chill with the paper and to yell at us. There were times when we thought he wasn’t home and would fly though the jump only to hear him yell while we were hitting max air. The fear sent us deep into the gully for escape until the coast was clear.
The day finally came. The old bastard had a massive stroke. It didn’t kill him, but it was devastating enough that the old bastard turned into the old teddy bear.
After years of being a complete bastard to everyone he knew, he began telling his wife and kids that he loved them and showered them with the good loving parts of himself that were buried beneath his bullshit.
I feel that even he himself got tired of the daily bastard part of himself that the good from him conspired to kill off the old bastard and finally be free of him.
He didn’t live much longer after that but at least his family and neighbors finally got to witness a few months of the good inside that finally prevailed.
My Christmas wish for everyone who is burdened with an old bastard is that they also have the type of stroke that kills that bastard in them to become a loving and caring person that they should be.
