The more time you spent chasing money, the fewer stories you’ll have. When things are drawing to a close, all you have are your experiences and your stories to keep you warm. It is the byproduct of a well-lived life. He taught me that happiness is not something that you just go out and find. He inspired me to leave that job and look for something more flexible so that I could go back to school. He made me want to have stories, to forget some of the amazing things that I had experienced because I had experienced too much to remember. For the short time I knew him, he was my hero. He had a catchphrase that he said over and over “I’ve got a million stories, and some of them are even true.” Some of them were very much not true, like when he swore up and down that the Germans shot green and red anti-aircraft shells at his plane on Christmas day. He showed me the “emergency kit” he was given in the war, for the worst-case scenario of being shot down in combat (It was essentially cigarettes and a light snack). He told me story after story during the many lunch breaks I ate in his apartment. Hank had been a B-17 tail gunner in World War II, at a time when the survival rate for pilots was roughly one in three (according to him). However, the competence of a monkey’s foot can get you promoted out of dishwashing, so it wasn’t long before I was promoted to cook. As a dishwasher, I never really talked to the residents. I had left my dishwashing job at this same retirement home after graduating high school in the fall of 2011, and by January 2012, I was back, after dropping out of college.
Being so close to death, in many ways, taught me to live. He was one of many people that I got to know (and lost) in my time working in a retirement home. Hank would be dead of lung cancer within a month. After the fit, his wife pleasantly chastised him for being crass, and my half-hour lunch break was over. The pay isn’t great, but the tips are huge!” “Oh yeah, Hank? What job?” “Circumcising elephants at the Denver Zoo!” Hank said, proceeding to cackle until his hacking cough came back.
“I saw something that would be perfect for you.
“I was looking in the classifieds today,” he said. He knew I was looking for a serving job, so I could quit as a retirement home night-cook and go back to school. One of my favorite jokes I’ve ever heard was delivered to me by a terminally ill man.
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