I don’t know if it was the time of day or the geography that explains why the grocery store was so overrun with canes and walkers. The human to walker ratio at this particular Safeway was somewhere in the four to one range.

The man in line before me at the checkout leaned wearily on such a device, but that’s not what I first noticed about him. It was the way he breathed, his hitching cough. Then I noticed his cargo, which he offloaded from the aforementioned walker with the care of a quarry worker slinging rocks. First items—a couple cans of Steel Reserve Beer—slammed on the belt—BANG BANG. Old fella’s got his Christmas Eve and Day covered; a double helping of Yuletide joy. He’ll use those giant beers to wash down the TGI Friday’s loaded potato skins and frozen pizza he added to his order today, the pizza being stuffed crust. (Christmas splurge.)

But there was an outlier on the rolling belt, something that touched my imagination and is the reason I write about the man now. A spiral notebook of the extra thick variety, red cover—a vessel fit for Captain Santa to log his naughty and nice list. I was fixated. What in the world was a guy like this planning to do with an empty notebook?

Then I spotted the front of his hat: a cruddy U.S. Marine Corps cap that looked old enough to have played part in the storming of Normandy. My eyes watered. When he extended his hands to settle up with the cashier, I saw they were of a purple hue—evidence of some pulmonary malfunction, my guess—I might have let loose a sob, were I not in line at a grocery store, where etiquette does not allow for such outbursts, unless it’s over the rising cost of deli meat.

For hours afterward, I wondered about the old man and his spiral notebook. Was he an amateur cartoonist, doodling away his evenings while sipping Steel Reserve? Perhaps a sports gambler, using the notebook to track football statistics to better inform his bets? No.

The most obvious explanation is often the correct one. The old vet with the nagging cough and purple hands is likely facing his final Christmas. The notebook is a future memoir. I can only imagine the stories it will contain.