Getting Old Gets Old

 

 

 

Getting old gets old. We are told by old people when we’re young that after a certain point we would achieve that elusive quality known as “wisdom.” Let me tell you about wisdom. Wisdom is crap you used to try to pass off as smart that people put up with later out if kindness. It’s still stupid but you deliver it in a stumbling, bumbling voice that makes it hard to understand so inquiring minds lend an ear in case they missed something during all the times you said exactly the same thing.

 

I do that. When you tell the same joke again and again at twenty it doesn’t have the same implications that it has when you are seventy plus. At twenty people will tell you to your face, “You’ve already told me that,” but at seventy-three they whisper the word Alzheimer’s and everyone in the intervention nods knowingly! There is also dementia. While Alzheimer’s is category one Bat-shititus dementia is just a nuisance that friends and family will put up with so long as they don’t have to change your Depends.

 

But if you control your bowels and your mouth eventually someone will call you “wise,” and depending upon the right positioning there could be some coin there. Take me for instance. I’m a fair to mid-level wordsmith who rearranges other people’s thoughts without venturing too far into plagiarism and getting sued. Point of fact being that most likely I’ve been demented all my life. Why else would I quit a job I’d been at for thirteen years and run off to Nashville to be a songwriter? You don’t need dementia to pull something like that, but it sure helps!

 

And my personal life. Been married six times! Talk about incompatibility! I’ve been run off so many times that I thought PMS was an acronym for “Pack My Stuff!” I have no style, took fifty plus years to learn to spell, and have to edit and re-edit my works to hide how stupid I really am and after seventy I figured out how to regurgitate the same mix-mosh I’ve produced since high school only I have discovered a method. When you really have nothing to say, mumble.

 

Not that there aren’t any wise old people out there somewhere. I mean, I’ve never met one but I’m sure there simply has to be at least one old bastard with three out of five of his ducks in a row. And all the child psychologists claiming groups such as the “Z” Generation is smarter or stupider than any other generation. Wanna know what the problem is? We have to do away with teenagers. Now hear me out. Teenagers are a recent denomination. A bunch of three-dollar bills to coin a phrase and the 50’s slang is an Easter Egg straight out of San Francisco. Verily Verily I say unto thee: A teenager will screw anything hot and holler from a stray sheep to a horse collar. Always have and always will. That’s because back in the day life spans were considerably shorter than now and we had to “git ‘r done.” Weren’t no time to be no teenager, lounging around trying to understand life. Put that bottle down and pick up that hoe. They’s taters to plant! You want a woman? Next row over. Don’t pick one that looks just like you!

 

Psychology is the bane of humanity. This is how you get all those levels of autism. How we go from “supid kid” to trying to get on the kids level. He ain’t got no level. He needs a hoe. Perhaps some day he’ll learn to count taters. If not, at least he can feed himself. But there is a vast gulf between the ages of thirteen to nineteen where kids, humans, two eyes and a nose are allowed to try to figure life out. Now, throw in a Doctor Spock and a pandemic or two, some suggestive or not so suggestive cartoons and video games and then wonder where all the mass shootings come from. Here’s some wisdom for you: Billy the Kid didn’t shoot up schools; he shot up county jails. “Hello Bob!”

 

And during all this nonsense those deemed “old” are saddled up with wise. I’m old and I can state categorically that I’m no wiser that I was after my sixth divorce. (Obviously!) But if you mumble just right you may be able to pull it off. Or at least stay out of the nursing home. Here’s a hint. If you’re not pushing a grocery basket, try and convince the kids that you have a stash of cash tucked back from all your years of being wise and all. Think today’s kids are too smart for that con? Au Contrairé! I once convinced a fairly cute, highly placed member of the local school board that the vermouth in a martini would neutralize the alcohol in the gin and she woke up wearing a “Keep Austin Weird” T-Shirt because I had the “wisdom” of years and the morals of the olives in her drink.

 

But getting old gets old. Time waits for no man. It waits for some women until that surgical knot comes undone under her scalp and she had to open her blouse to brush her teeth. That’s why Cris Hansen never runs out of material. Sit down. You know the bait decoy is really nineteen. Just whisper to her that you’re and old millionaire. Hell! Hansen did. How do you think he got her so cheap?