CHAPTER ONE

AN INCIDENT IN THE SUBWAY

About five years ago, I had a brief experience that since then has helped me to tell the difference between nurturing a sense of vibrant good health and nurturing the delusion of being still young. Put somewhat differently, I learned that a man of advanced years who has never felt himself hemmed in by chronology should nevertheless not allow himself to forget his chronology entirely.

The event took place late on a September afternoon when I, along with my wife and younger daughter, had just entered a New York subway car at the Times Square station. Pushed forward by the advancing throng of rush hour passengers, we were crammed together single file, with nineteen-year-old Molly in the middle and me packed in behind her. Between my back and the doors stood someone whom my peripheral vision had recognized only as a tall, broad-shouldered man, perhaps in his late thirties. No sooner had the train gotten under way than the fellow's bare right arm reached around past me, its hand extending forward in an obvious attempt to make contact with Molly's buttocks. As taken aback as I was by the man's brazenness, I did have the presence of mind to do what any father might: I pressed my body rearward just firmly enough to push him up against the car's door, putting Molly beyond the reach of his outstretched fingers. As though by some form of unspoken New York agreement, both he and I acted as though nothing had happened, and the train continued on its clattering way over the subterranean tracks.

But I was wrong to think that the episode was over. Scarcely half a minute had passed before I became aware of a barely perceptible creeping thing, surreptitiously entering the right-hand pocket of my khaki trousers. Any thought that imagination was playing tricks on me was dispelled a moment later when I was able to feel an unmistakable sensation through the fabric, of fingertips moving around inside the empty pocket.

In the flashing eyeblink of time that followed, it never occurred to me that I should consider the consequences of what I instantaneously decided must be done. In fact, "decided" is hardly the word--my next actions were virtually automatic. I plunged my hand into the pocket, transversely surrounded the bony knuckles of a palm wider than my own, and squeezed down with every bit of force I could muster. Aware that I was gritting my teeth with the effort, I did not let go until I felt more than heard the sickening sensation of bone grating on bone and then something giving way under the straining pressure of my encircling fingers. A baritone roar of pain brought me back to my seventy-one-year-old self, and made me realize that I had gone too far.

What had I let myself in for? Would not the simple act of removing the intruding extremity have sufficed? Or perhaps I should have done nothing--the pocket was, after all, as empty as it always is when I anticipate being in a crowded, chancy place. Made overconfident by hundreds of hours spent pumping iron in a local gym, I had succumbed to an unthinking impulse dictating that I crush the felonious hand. As the first flush of instinct faded, I all at once became certain that my victim's revenge would now swiftly follow. Alarmed by that thought, I relaxed my grip and felt the mauled appendage whip out of my pocket.

But who could have predicted that the response would take the form that it did? With his torso still pressed up between my back and the train's doors, my antagonist inexplicably shouted out a garbled accusation for all to hear, about my having ". . . TRIED TO STEAL MY BAG!" Being certain that I had misheard and anticipating a powerful assault, I...

 

The Art of Aging by Sherwin B. Nuland
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