Your Friendly Man

In the course of my work, I found my way to a house. Some drainage work was being done around the back, and I was there on a related issue. As a was surveying the house, I saw an elderly man standing at the corner of the yard, with a strange tool, almost a blade on the end of a stick, swinging it to and fro, shaving a bit of grass down around a light pole. As he saw me, he approached me to ask what I was doing. Not unusual in my course of work. As I was explaining, I got a growing sense he had no idea what I was talking about. He then retrieved his wife, who was fully aware of the situation. As he meandered away to put his tool back into the garage, she pulled me aside.

"My husband has Alzheimer's, so he gets confused easily. You need to be careful what you say to him."

Simple enough. When he joined us around back, where the drainage work was being done, he became somewhat animated, and attempted to explain the situation.

"Well, you see, how this whole thing started was-"

"That's not why he's here, dear." His wife quickly cut him off. "He doesn't need to know about- about our problem."

Their problem? It sounded eerie, but that's as far as the conversation went. I'll never know the rest.