Spooner is going senile in the mean/instant anger/paranoid way. I've witnessed this first hand over just a two year period as the old dude who is landlord of a rented-out condo next door went from pleasant, witty and warm to the ice cold, snarling freak who pounded on my door to tell me to never let my dogs into the back yard unattended again. Because they barked at him for five minutes when he started up an electric hedge trimmer
. The two dogs are little, cute and not dangerous looking. There is a secure fence and tall, thick hedge between the yards. This was the one and only time this ever happened! He just could not cope with the barking noise while I was in the shower. If he'd had a gun with him, I have no doubt he would have pointed it in my face, he was so totally fucking raging.
The apparent onset of senility or Alzheimer's can seem sudden; it's when the frontal cortex finally suffers enough deterioration that emotional control just....ends, basically. Most people show serious signs of memory lapse or reasoning ability early on, instead, and remain the sweet, loving grand parent you always knew. It's dangerous and tragic when the onset is the angry old man thing, instead. Another thing, just looking at his photo, Spooner looks 85, not 75. He is really breaking down fast. Probably been living alone, unvisited, watching FOX News all day. There are time bombs like him all over the country. They are living on tiny, fixed incomes, they live in old, deteriorating housing, surrounded by younger poor people who are different (not white) and thus "scary". They self-isolate and eat cheap crappy diets, don't exercise since they are too scared to take a walk in the neighborhood, become very weak and frail and super paranoid. Yeah, they want guns! That empowers the fuzzy thinking and paranoia. Remember that old man who jumped a school bus, killed the driver, and kidnapped a little boy, then held him hostage in an underground bunker for a week?
