Times Have Changed

Foreword

Sometimes life changes so slowly that we don’t notice—until one quiet afternoon reminds us.

This story is a small window into aging, friendship, memory, and the simple rituals that once defined who we were.

A cup of tea, a wicker chair, an old friend on the phone… and suddenly, you realize:

times have truly changed.

Times Have Changed

Written by Faramarz Parsa

It was Tuesday afternoon when I sat on my wicker chair beside the geranium pots and my loyal round table. Unlike every other Tuesday, there was no vodka and no beer. Only a glass of tea and two dates on the table.

I couldn’t help but laugh. I told myself:

“Look what you’ve come to… They say you don’t look seventy. Really? If I don’t look seventy, then where are the vodka and beer? And those cigarettes… oh, how good they were! Mornings with coffee, and on the days when alcohol was around… I’d take a deep drag, send the smoke down my lungs, let it swirl there, and then breathe it out with pure pleasure.”

It’s been a few years since cigarettes… I don’t know why… packed up and left.

I remember a freezing winter day in Virginia. Snow was pouring down. I had gone outside to smoke. My brother said:

“It’s cold, it’s snowing. Just smoke inside.”

I answered very seriously:

“No. I don’t want the smell to make the house dirty.”

He laughed:

“You’re not worried about dirtying your lungs, but you’re worried about the house?”

He had a point… a beautiful point.

Eventually, I quit smoking.

No—that’s not true. It quit me.

I would’ve stayed loyal if it had stayed.

Of course, my kids and my wife were very happy I gave it up.

I was lost in these thoughts when my phone rang, snapping the thread of my memories like a thin string.

“Hello?”

It was an old friend. Not that we see each other much now. There was a time when we were apart only when we slept. But now the kids have grown up and we’ve grown older. What to eat, what not to eat… where to go, where not to go…

The world has become strange.

When we were young, our parents used to say: do this, don’t do that, eat this, don’t eat that.

Now it’s true… times have really changed.

“Hello? Can’t you hear me?”

“You didn’t say anything for me to hear.”

He burst out laughing:

“I think you need a hearing aid!”

“Who? Me?”

“Yes! I said we’re meeting tomorrow morning at the usual café for breakfast with the guys. Are you coming? But you didn’t answer.”

I laughed even louder. He had said a whole paragraph and I hadn’t heard a single word.

“Alright. Who’s coming to pick you up?”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Oh, right… I’ll pick you up. Okay.”

“See you tomorrow… if we’re still alive and the world is still here.”

I hung up and looked at my glass. The tea had gone cold.

Thinking of a glass of vodka,

I drank the tea in one gulp.

You know, sometimes I sit there and think about all the years that slipped away without warning. The faces we’ve lost, the places that no longer exist, the days when everything felt simpler even if we didn’t realize it back then. Maybe that’s what getting older really is — learning to hold on to small moments, a cup of tea, a familiar chair, a friend’s voice, and accepting that life changes no matter how tightly we try to keep things the same.