Jon Carroll gives away a story

When I am an old guy, I will sit on a cross-country train and ask children to bring me things. I will flirt with their mothers and say outrageous things. I will also flirt with their fathers, because why not? Plenty of flirt for all. I will demand unusual things, like mustard and feathers. I will suggest that this is my last train trip, that I am suffering from an unspecified disease, that I am going to my son's funeral, that I am about to meet my high school sweetheart after 60 years. I will get the mustard and feathers, and I will say, "What would I do with these? Take them away." And then everyone would have a story about the old guy and the mustard and the feathers, so I will have given them something they could not have gotten any other way.

Read the whole thing here.