Strange Meetings With Birthday Greetings
It was a stunningly beautiful Autumn day, the azure blue sky acting like a blank canvas on which nature had decided to paint a masterpiece full of vibrant natural colors. A mosaic, leaf-confetti-littered pathway led off to a vanishing point far off in the distance. On both sides, lines of skeleton trees, shedding their summer foliage, stood like sentinels guarding the pathway to heaven. To each side, mid-life evergreens acted as a natural bulwark to protect the open parkland behind.
An old man sat on a park bench just off to the right. He was dressed in a casual pair of trousers and a matching jacket, complete with a chequered cap and a pair of Autumn brown leather shoes. He seemed to be buried in deep thought. Almost asleep, by the look of it.
It was my birthday and I was out for my afternoon stroll to exercise my aching bones after spending days of exhausting tests at the local hospital. It had been quite some time since I had last walked this way.
The route took me off the highway and along some old country roads full of peanut and cabbage farms. Groups of young children wearing the same style of yellow hats cluttered the roadside on the way home from school. Their manners in public were impeccable as they all stepped to one side to let me pass.
In about an hour I had reached the park where I liked to stop for a rest. Only this time the old man was sitting there. I was in two minds about whether to sit next to him or not, but in the end, my tired muscles made the decision for me.
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