Don't Patronize or Condescend To Me because I'm Old

Old people in our society are purported to be revered, but I’m finding we are not.  I don’t want to turn this into a rant because I’m not Andy Rooney, don’t have the eyebrows, and don’t want that kind of a reputation.

But I am going to offer some suggestions about how to deal with us seniors.

First treat us as you would anyone else.  We have the same parts you have, they’re just more experienced.

Treating us the same as you would anyone else means that you don’t tiptoe around us or walk on eggs.  We like a good joke, and some of us enjoy a good dirty joke.  Our vocabularies are about the same as yours (except for mine because I was an English teacher and mine is bigger, hah hah hah), and many of us use more crude words because we aren’t around children much to influence them badly.  My favorite bad word these days is the same as it has always been, and it’s really versatile:  I can use it as an expletive/ interjection, a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an adverb.  It doesn’t work as a p fucking ronoun or a preposition however.

We are old.  We know we are old (just like fat people know they are fat and people of color know they are people of color) and you can’t soften it with patronizing, condescending word games.  

I am not sixty-five years young; I’m sixty-five years old.  Please don't address me as young man: that’s way too condescending.  I am Bill.  I am occasionally sir, or Mr. Moser.  I hate the term Mr. Bill because of what SNL did to it years ago.  If you feel you must have a title in front of Bill for your children, you may add Uncle or Grandpa.  Or come up with something and ask me about it.

Just because we are old does not mean that we want it pointed out or particularly want special treatment.

My wife and I do not go to bed at 8 p.m. or dark - which ever comes first.  We do not eat at 4 p.m. to get the old folks’ special.  

We do, however, ask for AARP/ senior discounts.  But before we got old we asked for the AAA discount, the teacher discount (which I still get at Apple), the student discount (I’ve been  in some form of school for 53 of my 65 years, and I’m taking a class at the local junior college currently), the nice guy discount, the couple pairs of socks with a pair of shoes, or whatever we could get.  In my case it’s a function of being cheap, not of being old, and cheap is a completely different dysfunction.

We wear age-appropriate clothes, which for me means comfortable without being stuffy.  I wear jeans, shorts (well, maybe not age-appropriate), tee-shirts (but generally without much writing, and certainly without the word fuck or even FCUK on them), and sandals when I can get by with it.  I don’t own a suit, and don’t particularly want to.  I own ties (some from the 1940’s that I got from my late father) and I wear ties about three times every two years on average.  My attitudes about clothes haven’t changed much since I graduated from college.  I don’t wear my pants below my butt because I (I AM conceding here to old age) don’t want to trip.  I’m scared of breaking something, and they just aren’t comfortable.

My wife doesn’t wear miniskirts any more.  It’s not that she doesn’t have good legs (believe me, she does); it’s that she doesn’t want to have to always worry that she looks like some of those people in the viral email photos of The People of Walmart.  She doesn’t look like those people and never will, but she’s still a little concerned.  She is somewhat more conservative than I am, dresses more nicely, and cleans up a great deal better.

We don’t want to be given the check at a restaurant because we are the oldest.  Nor do we want to NOT be given it because we are the oldest.  We generally pay our share.  Occasionally more, occasionally less - it evens out over the long run.

Our cell phones are merely basic.  That has to do with cheap and what we like to spend our shekels on - NOT age.  We don’t go very many places and we don’t work, so we don’t need to have internet, email, puzzles, GPS, bells, whistles, and pizza take away on our phones.  Our cell phones, which we use whenever we want, will text if necessary and  receive texts and voice mail in addition to their main use - calling people, or the cops, or the AAA if we have car trouble.  

We got the phones a couple years ago and bought 1,000 minutes.  At the end of the first year we had to buy another hundred minutes to make the old minutes roll over.  The end of the second year is coming up, and we’ll buy another hundred minutes.  My wife will have around 700 minutes.  I text occasionally, so I have fewer, around 500.  Our phones will cost us about - amortized - $2.50 a month this year.  They do everything we need.  We still have a land line through our cable company with free long distance. I throw my money away on art supplies, not cell phones.

I don’t like organ recitals from acquaintances.  If you aren’t part of my family (extended and chosen), I generally don’t want to hear about your ills, your prescriptions, your surgeries, your aches and pains.  And I don’t want to tell you about mine.  If you’re part of the intimate circle, I love you too much not to listen - and worry.

If I do something stupid or that offends you, call me on it.  My true friends always do.  I find that I have more filters rather than fewer as I age.  I bite my tongue more and don’t say as many of those clever hurtful things that pop into my head. This is the reverse of conventional wisdom where old people say whatever they want.  I always have, and got by with it because people accepted me that way.

In short, my age should not temper your dealings with me.  I’m still in here.  Don't treat me so softly you create a self-fulfilling prophesy and give me dementia.

As always, feel free to comment below.