I feel so normal

     Today I met another kind of single senior. I’m staying with friends and their cousin visited overnight. He’s just a little older than me, but not anchored in today. Not that he has dementia. He’s just living in the past. He spoke about a month in Oxford as if it were a few years ago. He went in the 1970’s. I am loquacious enough to make conversation with a wall. But he had me stumped. At first I thought he was hard of hearing. When he did respond to a prompt, it was with a nonsequiter. Was he for real or a character cut out of Seinfeld? He did want to date but couldn’t find anyone in “his group.” I finally gathered that meant an Eastern European Jew, kind of a small pool when you’re already an odd person. He joined groups to meet people. He wondered why whenever he became friendly with a woman she disappeared or told him she was married. Even though he was very hard to be with, it was touching that he still wanted a special someone. And sad. What are the chances that such a person will meet a special someone? Most of the normal people I know have had a hard time doing that.