A Moment

“How old is Ewan?” I ask politely.
“Oh Ewan is 32,” he said, fixing his black-rimmed glasses and pushing his hair back from his face.
“Ok,” I murmured, carefully penciling in the numbers 3 and 2 inside the tiny white boxes. “And his date of birth?”
“Uh, July--“ His eyes popped and his hands jumped to his face. “Oh my god, Ewan’s only 31!”
I chuckled as he shook his head and moaned. “Oh He would just have a fit if he knew! I cannot believe that I said he was 32!”
“It’s ok,” I sympathized, tempted to reach out and pat his shoulder. “He’s not here, he didn’t hear you!”
He threw his hands up and rolled his eyes. “He would just have a fit! Oh I cannot believe I said that.”
“Well, don’t worry about it. He’s not here, so he didn’t hear you.” I looked around. “Unless he has a recorder rigged up somewhere out here!” I laughed.
“Oh, no, he doesn’t,” he gasped and laughed. Shaking his head, he exclaimed for the third time, “He would just have a fit.”
As I finished filling out the rest of the form, he explained. “All last week I kept teasing him about being 32, because his birthday is coming up. Oh He would just be beside himself if he heard me say he was 32!”
On my way down the steps, a black cat ran past my legs. “Oh!” I stopped to look at the feline. “What’s his name?”
“Cherubino,” he answered, watching the cat wash his paws.
The name echoed familiar. “What’s that from?”
“The Marriage of Figaro,” he said. “We had a cat before this one named Figaro, he was named Figaro when we got him, so when we got this one we named him Cherubino.”
I nodded.
“But what we didn’t realize is that the first cat was actually named after the cat from Pinocchio.”
“Well, I am sure that the cat in Pinocchio was named after the opera, so you’re in the clear.”
We laughed and I waved goodbye as I walked down the driveway.