In spite of their parallel names, ages, life seasons, and retirement situations, the two men serve as foils for one another.
However, the richness of his youth leads him to discount life under his present old-age conditions, and he finds himself constantly bitter and dissatisfied, longing for seasons gone by.
Rude to those around him and pessimistic in most things, Senior is generally disagreeable, but his deep and loyal affection for Junior (although not often expressed) remains an endearing and redeeming quality throughout the story.
The story describes Senior and Junior as they go about their days, making the thirty-minute trek each week to cash in their pension checks and sitting on their verandas bickering back and forth.
Although opposing in their plights— Junior plagued by death, and Senior by life, Junior by a past unlived and Senior by a past that can never be lived up to— both men grapple with the same common themes of the human experience, coming together to show the double edge sword that is old-age survival, memory, and the passing of time.