Tuesday, November 16, 2010

The Old Folks at Home

Before I go on with this let me be the first to say I am sixty years old, and I am probably closer to death than I am to my high school graduation. Forty three years ago the concept of actually being sixty years old, was to me, a nebulous image of living in Florida with a bunch of other old people waiting to die. Well, I am not waiting to die, the rest of it is pretty close to reality though.

So here it is. All you youngsters up north in New York, Chicago, and everywhere in between, Quit packing up grandma and grandpa every November, and sending them down to Fort Lauderdale. I've seen them at the airport, and wandering through the shopping malls down here, and they don't look all that happy to be here. They look lost. Have you ever even asked them if they really want to spend the winter in Florida?

Last Monday when we were returning from Boston, we had twelve (I counted) folks from age seventy to a hundred and seventy, in wheel chairs trying to get on the plane. On top of that there were the ones with the walkers with tennis balls on the tips, shuffling around, and bumping into the wheel chairs. When the gate attendant announced that folks who need extra help could board early, all the wheel chairs and walkers moved towards the entrance en masse. The only people left at the gate to board normally after that were me, Mark, and a couple of geezers who slept through the initial announcement.

I just got back from shopping for dog food, and cat food, something I do constantly for some reason, and I couldn't get over how many old people were clogging the aisles at Publix. I don't mean old like me, or even like my mom, I mean old like they actually witnessed the first airplane flight. So please, please, won't you consider asking grandma and grandpa if they'd like to stay up north this year? Ask them if they'd rather be doted on by their loving grandchildren, and children all winter, instead of driving up US1 with their door open and the left turn signal blinking for miles. Because honestly, it's dangerous enough with Mark out on the roads, and me pushing the cart through the super market.

7 comments:

  1. As a young man age of 29 I'll never get over being beaten at arm wrestling by a 99 yr old geezer. How humiliating...and guess who he was?

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  2. Are you sure you were 29 you old fart.

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  3. Dennis arrived this afternoon. He has told me of 22 wheelchairs on his flight from Chicago. The invasion has started. By this time next week the streets of Fort Lauderdale will be clogged with gigantic Mercurys, Cadillacs, and Lincolns, some of them driving through the windows of strip mall stores.

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  4. Isn't it funny how "old" is based on your perspective?! I recently heard a news report where they commented that "2 elderly people were found dead in their home". Well, they were 62&63....our ages and I am shocked that it is considered elderly. I don't feel old (inside), old is 30 years older than ME!!!

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  5. What the hell Peggy? 62 and 63, neither is my age. By the way, inside is the only place I feel old. Inside my joints, my muscles, my gastrointestinal tract. I like to think my mind is young, but then I turn on crappy MTV, and start whining about the good old days when MTV had cool videos on.

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  6. Yes those early MTV shows were all cool videos nonstop. Now they have become just another tv program.

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  7. I see you've met my parents:)
    jackie
    bliss farm antiques

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