Mike.

I had not seen him in many years. My fault. Or my oversight. Or my fear. I do not know which; perhaps all of those things.
My old bridge partner and my old friend. My rallying partner. We spent far too many hours with inconsequential things, which were important to us back then. We laughed together, we planned together, we ate together. We wasted time together.
For a time, twice, we lived together. Once when we were both employed by the same employer, and both transferred to the same location. And we both quit that job, within months of each other, for the same reasons.
Then again, several years later, when I had a very young family, he rented a room with us while he worked on his graduate degree in mathematics. Yes, he had a talent for that.
And then he moved out, and moved on.
But then his attention waned, his concentration failed. And eventually his co-ordination began to fail. Multiple Sclerosis.
He was angry. Young, with much to do, and now, never to be done. Ever.
And I saw him less and less. He moved. I saw him. He struggled. He moved again. I heard about him. But then, eventually, he was unable to care for himself and was hospitalized. Permanently. And I never saw him again.
Until today. And all those memories come back all at once. And will not go away.
Requiescat in pace.

4-letter words, Hmph

I walk, usually every morning, to the house that I'm renovating. The walk is often pleasant, sometimes noisy, occasionally annoying. But uniquely interesting. And always loooong. It's actually about 2 miles from where I am presently domiciled, so it's a chore sometimes to trudge that distance, just to do some more work when I arrive. But, as they say, if not me, then who? Besides, it helps me keep my girlish figure.
Anyway, I have about 30 minutes (when I'm walking) to observe people. Of course, what else, since the scenery is "pedestrian" at best.
One thing I observe constantly - the lower echelons of society use a LOT of swearing. One four-letter word in particular. (And it matters not the gender of the speaker.) It's forever f@sk this, or f@sk that, or that f@sker. Hmph. Talk about a pandemic. I'm beginning to think that sans the expletives, these "people" could not communicate at all.
Or maybe that's true already, if one cares to judge the lack of content in what's being transmitted. (An aside - can one do content analysis when there isn't any content?)
The medium is, once again, the message. This represents the final triumph of our "good self-image" educational system.
Abort, retry, mostly fail.