It's a Small World... - ha ha

“It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small world after all.
It’s a small world after all!
It’s a small, small world!”

He wouldn’t shut-up. We had been sitting, this old man and I, in this little lobby area for hours and for that entire length of time he kept singing that same line over, and over, and – guess what – over again. I was about ready to strangle him as the third hour came rolling in.
“Will you shut-up, old man?” I sneered at him, not really feeling the energy to show my elders any respect, especially after hearing that broken-record-player line. I couldn’t believe it when he turned to me, his mouth actually clasped shut!
“Thank you.”
I suppose I could be a little polite.
“You don’t like my voice, young man?” His voice wheezed at the ends of his sentences like he inhaled helium upon every breath.
“It’s not so much your voice that I –”
“You don’t like my voice, young man?”
His voice got squeakier and much higher in pitch as though he was starting to suffocate on all that helium. I took a moment to look at him, obviously because this situation, now that he had stopped singing and had begun yelling – or rather squeaking at me – needed to be thought out. His right eye was bugging out at me, as though the eyeball was too big to fit under his shrinking skin in that one corner of his face, but the left eye was almost completely shut as if that lid had too small of an eyeball and too stretched out of skin. Hair was growing out of his ears like weeds and a few pods of them were also popping out of his huge nostrils. Some whiskers spiked from his face everywhere like short-cut wires of aluminum that needed some more trimming.
“You have a lovely voice,” I said, my smile squeezing my eyes. What a liar I was, how fake. I hoped he couldn’t tell.
“A lovely voice?” he squeaked, scooting a seat closer to me, a wooden claw of joints and bones held up to his ear hair. “Do I really?”
I couldn’t help but smell his scotch breath all over his garbage-bag clothes and my nose wrinkled up and my eyes teared painfully like acid.
“Yes,” I choked, trying to hold my breath and answer his question at the same time. I highly recommend not doing that, by the way.
He chuckled through his nose like a horse and slapped me on my shoulder blade. His hand indeed was wooden.
“What a nice, young man,” he wheezed at me and leaned closer like a giant puppet, loosely touching my arm with his kingdom of germs. “Why don’t you sing-a-long?”
I don’t know what happened next, but I am completely certain that there had been no nurses in that lobby the last I looked.