It's an exceptionally slow day today.

I just went downstairs for a breath of fresh smoke. While I was out there, this oldtimer peeked his head out the door groundhog-like for a second and then walked outside. He just stood there with me on the stairs for a second before saying, "Boy...it sure is cloudy and hazy out today."

I looked up at the sky for a second. Cloudy, yes. Hazy, no. Cataracts, definitely.

I looked at the guy for a second. He was old and frail, and looked like he was at most a year or two away from going to that cloudy, hazy place in the sky himself. I figured since he didn't seem to have that much time left on this mortal plane, there was no sense in making him worry about cataracts. That'd be my good deed for the millennium.

I said to him, "Uhhh, yeah. Sure is. A little from column A, a little from column B."

"Huh?" he asked. He was going deaf, too, apparently.

"Yeah, it's cloudy and hazy," I shouted at him loudly and slowly, like i was speaking to a Japanese tourist waiting for the bus.

That was a mistake.

He looked shocked. "Are you SURE it's hazy? My eyesight's going a little bit," he said, sounding like he thought *I* was the one with growths on the cornea.

The fucker had me. Here I was, trying my best to participate in inane weather chatter and to not make this guy start worrying about having to carry a white cane and buy dark sunglasses. I wasn't done with my cigarette yet and didn't want to throw it out, so my options were limited to perpetuating the lie -- which would make the guy think that at least one of us had shitty eyesight -- or hoping that his time would come right there, getting me out of the situation. I was pretty much fucked.

We've seen too much death and destruction lately, so I went with the first option. "Oh, it's definitely cloudy and hazy. Reeeeaaaaally hazy. I can barely see out here. Wooooo!" I was looking from side to side nervously to make sure no one heard me.

"Well, it's just the one eye that's going. The other one's pretty good still. Are you sure it's hazy?" The guy was looking at me like I was a crackhead.

"Oh, yeah. Totally, totally hazy." I laughed the nervous laugh of someone lying to the cops. "Hehehehe. Noooo, officer. That's not my heroin. Don't be silly."

But the old guy was having none of it.

He looked up at the sky, then up and down State Street, then back at me. "It's not hazy at all." And then he walked back inside.

Jerk.