Gawd!  It really happened.  A complete lapse into that once unthinkable paradigm; viz., a Seniors Moment. I hadn’t a clue to whom I was speaking!  That is, I mistook the person to whom I was speaking as someone else entirely. Unhinged I had continued the vacuous conversation (with all the unwarranted conviction of certainty) for an eternity before suddenly perceiving my foolish error. I had even remarked how svelte he was looking.

While tricycling this morning in my old neighbourhood (where I had first resided upon arriving in Almonte almost 50 years ago), I had stopped along the sidewalk to chat with a fellow whom I mistakenly thought was the owner of a nearby house.  The house I had in mind was at the end of Clyde Street directly behind the original Almonte Land Registry Office on Brougham Street and across the street from St. Paul’s Anglican Church. The house used to belong to George Slade (one of the reputed “home boys” from England). I knew the house well because it was located immediately behind the house where I first lived in Almonte and which I rented from Rev. Geo. Bickley while he was then minister of St. Paul’s Anglican Church where he and his wife Anne lived in the manse.  Out of the kitchen window of my rented house I had watched Slade (who was in his eighties at the time) chop firewood in his backyard to heat his humble home. Subsequently, following George’s death, the house was serendipitously bought by a chap named Ian LeCheminant who turned out to have constructed much of the home in western Canada belonging to Kim Graybiel who was the brother of Janet Graybiel (wife of Michael Tweedie) with both of whom I had been at Glendon Hall for undergraduate studies and whom I had represented upon the purchase of their home in Rockcliffe Park in Ottawa. That alone is an entire other story.  But after Ian moved to British Columbia he sold the house to my erstwhile physician Dr. Franz Benedetto Ferraris who subsequently sold to Dieter (the man to whom I mistakenly thought I was speaking alongside the roadway this morning).

I said to him, “Dieter, I’ve just had a look at your house. I’ll give you four million dollars for it, my final offer!”  The chap who had been running alongside the road was not to be outdone by the offer. He unhesitantly replied, “I’ll take it!”  The problem was however, as soon became apparent in the next few moments of our banter, he was not Dieter and he hadn’t the faintest idea what I was taking about. When, in response to his enquiry, I extolled the virtues of his property, surrounded by historic landmarks, having a magnificent back yard, not far from the river, he only stared at me. At some point shortly following this curious exchange, I realized he was genuinely unaware of what I was talking.  More significantly I grasped he was someone other than the man I thought him to be, particularly when he said, “We’ve always lived on Edward Street.”  “Edward Street?”, I exclaimed in wonder. It was then I believe that I twigged I did in fact know him but that he was not Dieter (though in my defence they look much alike).  He was Chris, Carolyn’s husband; step-father of Scott and Susie!  And that too is another story entirely!

Having exposed myself the gentleman was kind enough merely to observe, “A seniors moment!” The grandeur was appreciated.  But I can assure you there is no dignified recovery from the abuse!