Intimation: Hinting at a meaning but not stating it explicitly.
“I’m goin’ to the go-go if you know what I mean. Don’t worry, I’ll be back.” My nursing home cohort was on a day trip to the Museum of Natural History. We were viewing some giant dinosaur skeleton when it hit me. My walker was tied with a piece of clothesline rope to my partner Mitzi’s. It was supposed to keep us from getting separated and lost.
I didn’t want to embarrass her by dragging her into the go-go while I did my business. I pulled out my switchblade that I kept from my years on the streets of New York—they had been recently legalized by Cuomo before he got the boot. I had a fishing license in my wallet which allowed me to carry it concealed.
Mitzi screamed, thinking I was going to finish her off in the middle of the museum. I was only going to cut the rope. I cut the rope and took off with my walker, running as best as I could. I didn’t make it. My sweat pants had a big wet circle on the front. The museum guards had called the police when Mitzi screamed. I was being handcuffed.
Mitzi was crying and apologized. She told me if I was more straightforward and had just said I needed to take a leak, none of this would’ve happed. She talked the police out of arresting me and we went AWOL from our cohort. They would be panic stricken at “Shady Lakes Nursing Home” when they couldn’t find us.p, but I needed some dry pants.
Mitzi managed to find a Salvation Army Family Store. We bought me a used pair of sweatpants. They were pink and said “Villanova” in huge blue letters up the right leg. I liked them and so did Mitzi. She paid for the sweatpants—she could afford them. She was a millionaire whose children had put her away so they could get their hands on her money. Her husband had died in in 1990 after making a fortune in the 70s in the coke spoon and disco suit business, importing the spoons and suits from China and marking them up %1,000.
Mitzi’s children, Buck and Lola, were classic children of wealth—selfish, lazy, and privileged. Mitzi was 92 and they’d been mooching from her for decades. They never had a job or did anything for humanity. They just laid about drinking expensive champagne, complimenting each other on their good taste, and plotting ways to steal their mother’s money.
Mitzi and I decided to “visit” them. I would threaten them with my knife and they would leave Mitzi alone. We revved up our walkers and took off for their posh condo.
When we got there, they weren’t home. There was a message on their doorbell cam saying “We’ve gone to Greenland and we have insurance.”
Mitzi called an Uber and we went back to Shady Lakes. Mission unaccomplished.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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