What's Wrong With Old People?

If there’s one thing that scares the bejeezus out of me more than standing on a rickety pier with a sack of rocks and an ankle bracelet, it’s the idea of getting old. I mean, it must really suck being an old person and no longer being able to contribute anything to society other than creating a demand for nursing home jobs that facilitate employment opportunities for foreign language speaking immigrants and Mexicans.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not against old people – my Mother is one. But that doesn’t mean I want to be an old person myself. I hate lawn bowls, cribbage, Steradent and listening to Barbara Streisand. And I definitely don’t want to drive an automatic beige-coloured Mazda 323 anytime soon. So being old isn’t my thing.

For one, being old means you can’t enjoy your food anymore. I like my food, and I like variety. But once you get old you can only eat a basic meat and three vegetables meal. And everything on the plate has to be cooked or boiled to the point where all nutritional value is sapped away, leaving grey coloured green peas, hard chunk mashed potatoes (so dry that they crack as soon as they hit the plate), cauliflower in a cheeseless white sauce and two brittle chops shrunk to the size of a chicken nugget and drowned in a tasteless puke that someone called 'gravy'.

And the worse thing is that once you get too old to eat your meat and three vegetables directly from the plate, some ‘care professional’ will put it through a blender and serve it to you in the form of a grey-coloured swill. And as much as you try, half of your swill will always dribble down your chin and onto your shirt – so ending the myth that old people are skinny because all the obese people died before they got old. The truth is that old people are skinny because they’re all half starved.

Now food is only the front end of the problem for old people. There are things happening at the other end that are just as scary. For example, old people can’t go to the toilet the same way that you and I do. For an old person, just getting out of the chair is a monumental feat. Too much exertion and “oops, did I do that?” Well, duh Grandma, yes you did! And you know she'd clear the room save for the fact that if any of the others move, they're going to "oops" themselves as well.

 And I’m not just talking about ‘number ones’ either – the squirts flow from every opportunity. Like, I read somewhere that a Doctor colleague of mine explained to one of his older male patients that he required a urine specimen and a stool sample – so the old guy had his pyjama pants couriered over to the laboratory for analysis. Notwithstanding that after examining the pyjama pants, the lab technician was able to determine that the patient had had the same medical condition for at least the last six months.

The only compensation for old people is that they can’t remember any of it. Whether they slop their swill or “oops” themselves, the instant it happens they forget about it. They'd rather chase imaginery butterflies or recount nostaligic tales of darning socks and eating offle during the Great Depression.

But this freaks everyone else out doesn't it? We all seem to want to worry about old peoples' ailing memory, and we all tend to feel so sorry for them because of it. And do you know why we feel this way? (like, is it really a tragedy that old people can't remember crapping their pants? How is making them remember going to make their lives any better?). The truth is that we feel this way because we're all frightened that one day we'll get old and we won't remember slopping our swill or "oopsing" ourselves.

Take the example of a particular old fellow that I know (for anonymity’s sake we’ll call him ‘Bob’ because that is not the name of my Girlfriend's Father). Now Bob likes his beer. And being a parochial kind of guy, Bob only likes one brand of beer – the brand synonymous with the region where he spent his formative years. So the other day I take Bob to the local liquor outlet so he can buy some of his beloved beer. Now his brand comes in a blue box. But this day he goes to buy the brand in the orange box. So I try to stop him –

“Bob, that’s not your brand, you like the one in the blue box.”
“Yeah, but this one is cheaper this week.”
“But Bob, you don’t like that brand, you don’t like any of the brands except for the one in the blue box.”
“Rubbish! I often drink other brands, and I’ve always liked the one in the orange box.”
“You’ve never had the one in the orange box, you only ever buy the blue brand”.
“I often buy the orange brand, what would you know anyway?!”


So Bob buys the orange brand and we take it out to the car and put it in the boot.

Five minutes later when we get home and I open the boot for Bob he asks, “Where’s my beer?”
“It’s right there”, I tell him, pointing to the orange box.
“That’s not my beer; I only ever get the brand in the blue box…”

Poor old Bob, I can't but help feel sorry for him.

And that explains why I'm standing here on a rickety pier with a sack of rocks and an ankle bracelet - I’m determined that I’m not going to end up old like that.

Only, I can’t quite remember what the rocks and the bracelet are for…

… and why are my pants wet? I don’t remember being in the water…

… and what’s that slopped down my shirt?...

I can’t quite remember what I think… but I’m pretty sure I’m usually right.