A Shocker

So I get into the empty elevator at Mom's hospital. Reader's Digest in hand, I start reading an article as the cable descends a floor. At the next landing, a mid-twenties guy steps on.

Have you ever been able to sense that someone wants to interrupt you? Me too. I put on an especially interested face, as though the article were outlying a cure for all cancers using only water and table salt.

"My aunt," says Guy. Even out of my peripheral vision, I can tell he's looking squarely at me. So I oblige by looking up. A run-of-the-mill partially shaved dude in worn jeans, he doesn't look especially threatening or interesting, except for his inexplicable urge to reveal part of his family tree to me.

I quickly skim the possible scenarios:

1. He is about to tell me something about his aunt.
2. He thinks I might be a fellow spy and is speaking to me in code.
3. He thinks that I am his aunt.

Fortunately, the response for all three is to stare in silence.

"Always asking me to do things. This pen," he says, holding it toward me with a smile.

This eliminates none of the scenarios. In fact it adds a fourth:

4. He is looking for an excuse to stab someone with a pen.

I take the pen as if interested, so as to reduce the options back to three. He suggests that I try it out, but after a few clicks no writing tip emerges.

"Don't tell me it doesn't work!" he says with mild annoyance. "It's supposed to be one of those pens that shocks you."

5. He is looking for an excuse to electrically shock a stranger in an elevator, who might or might not have a pacemaker in his chest that could be tipped into a massive coronary.

The elevator door opens at my stop, and I return the pen. I notice that this is the floor for the mental health ward. He doesn't follow me. Somehow, I'm not surprised.