intelligent musings aboiut the elderly
11/13/03 ~ 9:51 a.m.
yesterday i had many brushes with the type of person who recieves tuesday discounts. that is to say, old people. and i have thoughts.
the older generation is slowly but surely changing. there are still some of the "old bats" out there, the ones who don't use computers, still have shag carpets,give their great-grankids $5 for their birthdays, and end up with blue hair. yes, they still exist. but they're a dying breed (no pun intended, i swear!)
see, there are a lot of old people at the YMCA. makes sense, right? it's a "family" place. they go there and do thier aqua aerobics and lift coke bottles. (and take naked group showers that are kinda scary. but i'll stay away from that.) speaking of lifting, there was this crazy old man buying a 3 lb weight attarget yesterday. he turned to me and told me that now his name is "hunk." he said that his proof was the weight. in fact, he went on down to juice shack and when they asked his name, he said "hunk", and they got blank looks on their faces because they didn't know if they should laugh. then he proceeded to ask the cashier if he could purchace the little sticks that divide up separate customer's purchaces on the conveyer belt. he started waving it around like a sword. old people can still be batty sometimes.
these people are still the old fashioned kind. but think about it. when you and i are 60, 70, 80 years old, are we going to be the same as they are? certainly, we'll be old, but we won't have the "i lived through the depression in the snow uphill both ways" attitude. (well maybe the "i was there on 9-11" attitude, but whatever).
am i making sense? not really. ok, let's go from another angle. here at the brokerage that i'm at this week, there are two gay couples that have accounts. one is a male couple, they're both 50. the other is a female couple, they're 79!
see? there's some change right there. fifty years ago, would you meet 79 year old lesbians in your day to day life? not too likely. but as we get older, that sort of thing is going to be more and more common. and even better, it's going to be more and more ACCEPTED.
my mom is a "baby boomer." when her generation is old (and sucking up all oursoial security), they're just going to be old hippies. i doubt we'll have as many stuffy old ladies with bra straps showing and grumpy old men who are chauvanistic to the point of insanity. and then my generation.... look out. hoochies, homosexuality, and punk rock... what WILL my 80's look like?
so basically, i had 3 old people run-ins: YMCA, target, and lesbians. and these experiences made me realize that the older generation is about to change. out with the old, in with the less old.
~holly~
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