91 and kicking

You know what I want to be like when I am 91 years old? Just like the patient I had last night.
I came into his room to bring him some pills and he grinned from ear to hear.
“Come right on in, don't be shy!”
I looked at the pictures of his family he had and talked to him for a minute about the weather outside.
“Do you know how old I am?” He asked me with a twinkle in his little blue eyes.
I decided to guess on the low side.
“80?”
“Higher.” He said.
“85?”
“Higher”
“89?”
“Almost! I'll be 91 in January!”
“Well, you sure look good,” I told him. “And best of all”, I pointed to his forehead, “You still have all your faculties.”
“Oh yes, I do!” He crowed. “How many 91-year-olds do you know that can say the ABC's backwards?”
And then without a pause he began to rattle off the ABC's in reverse.
“And how many 91-year-olds do you know that can say this sentence fast, three times?” He asked, and then proceeded with something like “I slept on three slit sheets that sure slipped sleet like shirt sheets”... or something like that.
He rattled it off three times in a row and that beamed at me. “See if you can say that one.”
Growing up with brothers has made me wise to that type of trick. I shook my head and laughed.
“I don't think so.”
I finished giving him his medications and he offered me some grape-flavored candies as I walked out of the room I could hear “slit sheets slipped sheepishly...”
Ah, the joie de vivre! On days when I feel discouraged I will think of him: bed-ridden, in pain, alone; but full of zest and still trying to trick some gullible nurse into saying something rude.