Month: December 2018

You’re only as old as … your age

Posted on by thatsgettingold

All those aches and pains, and moments of forgetfulness, certainly make us think of ourselves as “getting old.” Well, let me tell you the best way to get over that. Sit at a lunch with REALLY old people!

I had the unfortunate circumstance of attending a funeral this weekend for my wife Carrie’s uncle. The family and his friends gathered, and Carrie and I sat at a table with some of the departed’s old friends. On the back side of 85, these folks were still with it mentally (mostly), but they had other problems. The husband can’t hear, and as such doesn’t so much speak as YELL… in ALL CAPS!

“SO, DAVID, IT’S BEEN A LOT OF YEARS. YOU STILL EDITING?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Still doing it.”

“WHAT???”

“I SAID, YES.. STILL DOING IT!”

“DOING WHAT??”

“EDITING.”

“YOU’RE AN EDITOR??”

And so it went.

At this point, I was hoping the attention we had drawn by literally shouting at each other would shift off of me, and thankfully, at that moment, his wife asked him to get her her morning pills.

Now, I take three pills every morning, and think that’s a lot. This women takes nine pills in the morning, and as she put each one in her mouth before swallowing it down with water, she gave a little play-by-play. “This one’s for diabetes,” she crowed, taking a gulp. “This one’s for my blood pressure.” Another gulp. On she went. Someone else at the table commented, “They’re very colorful pills.” (Hey, an opening for a wisecrack remark that would really kick the conversation into gear. But it wasn’t my shot to take.) The woman replied. “That’s how I can tell them apart.” (Not quite the pointed pith I was hoping for.) Anyway, I thought they looked like those weird-flavored jellybeans you see in those specialty candy stores. Her liver pill looked like the “vomit” flavor, while her thyroid medication looked like the flavor “Leaking Rectum.” (Or did I just confuse that with my wife’s favorite nail polish color? You know I would love the job of naming nail polish. I’ve got it all figured out. Just find anything random. Literally… ANYTHING… RANDOM… and you’ve nailed it. “Dumpster Dive” — a greenish-grayish, and “Itchy Elbows” — pinkish-reddish, are two that I think could really sell!)

But back to the lunch. After the woman had taken her pills, she told her husband he needed to put drops in her eyes. He didn’t budge. “I NEED MY DROPS,” she yelled. He reached into his pocket and said, “TILT YOUR HEAD BACK.” By now, everyone was watching this.

His hand wasn’t steady, her head wasn’t steady. This would not go well.

“HOLD STILL,” he said.

“It’s running down into my ear!!”

Moments later, “You’re putting in too many drops!!”

“WELL, YOU KEEP MOVING AROUND.”

“I’M NOT MOVING!!!”

When I looked over, she was wiping drops off her cheek and chin. The husband beamed as if he had just completed a delicate brain surgery. The wife’s rapid-fire blinking indicated that none of the drops actually made it into her eyes.

Speaking of drops … Believe it or not, not a single drop of alcohol had been consumed.

The day wore on, until it was time to leave. You know, for a long time, I was under the clearly mistaken impression that saying ‘goodbye’ meant you’re leaving. Apparently, goodbye really means, “so what else is new?”

“It was so great to see you. Wish it could have been under better circumstances. But I’ll call you and we’ll get together soon! Take care now.”

“Thanks, you too … say, was that a new car I saw you drive up in?

“Yeah, you like it? Funny story…”

The kids, and a 62-year-old child we’ll call “David,” fell to the floor, writhing, kicking the air and loudly moaning as if the act of leaving held the only key to our survival. But as the grownups prattled on, I realized that I was ABLE to writhe on the floor and kick the air. And NOTHING HURT! So take that, aging. You’re going to have do more than make me forget a few ‘Jeopardy’ answers before you get me. Besides, I saw a report this week that said 70 is the new 40, due to how much we exercise and generally take better care of ourselves than our grandparents did. So that should get me to about 110. Hey, original black-hoodie guy with the scythe… suck on that!!

The turn of the millenials

Posted on by thatsgettingold

Those of you who know me know my rants about millenials. We’re blamed for ruining them with the invention of the “participation trophy” — awarding them for simply showing up (and often even if they didn’t). We’re blamed for ruining them by allowing their use of technology at young ages, so they don’t speak and can’t figure anything out without the aid of their cellphones. (Some far-off day, in generations yet to come, humans will have evolved to the point where children are born with the phone attached to their hands. Might as well, since they don’t use them for anything but typing anyway!) We’re told we coddled and spoiled them, never pushing them nor preparing them for life outside the home.

This was the subject at a lunch I attended at a recent technology conference. One of the people at the table was a Gen-X woman who said she works at the company “that gives you wings!” I had to ask the guy sitting next to me on the other side. He didn’t know either. Eventually, someone at the table identified the company as Red Bull. The drink of millenial champions!

Anyway, I was telling this GenXer, who lives squarely between boomers like myself and the millenials, about an email exchange I had with an employee. Here’s how the exchange went. Worker: “WFH.” Me: “WFH? WTF?” Worker: “LOL! Working from home.”

I was railing about how that’s not part of our company policy. The GenXer interrupted. “So, what’s wrong with working from home?” I said, how is it that someone can just decide not to come into the office on any given day? We have an office so we can work collaboratively, exchange ideas, in the hopes that all of us thinking about the same things will come up with something better than any of us could come up with alone.

But now that I think about it, when they’re at work, millenials just plug in headphones and don’t talk anyway. I have to wave semaphores while jumping up and down to get them to look up.

The woman next to me said, “Well, don’t you use Slack, or Teams, for collaboration?” I replied that we do use Slack (it’s an application for sharing projects, messages, comments.. basically, a collaboration platform.) “So, what’s the problem,” she asked. “Haven’t you ever been Slacked? (The problem is, the verb “to slack” means to do less than is required. Hey, a perfect fit for millenials!!)

But I fumfurred a bit, and then blurted out, “Because that’s just not how we work.”

That’s when I realized that I’ve become my Dad… or worse .. Tevye! (See: “Fiddler on the Roof”) “We work this way because we’ve ALWAYS worked this way. It’s TRADITION!”

Then I had another epiphany, right after I had a delicious chocolate-y mini-tort thing with melted dark and white chocolate inside, with marshmallow and a Hershey’s square on top … Whoa! Almost lost the train of thought there.

The epiphany was this. I am old and set in my ways. The millenials simply work differently than I do, and I am the one not changing and keeping up with the times. Studies show that in the next decade or so, more people will work from home than go into offices. In fact, they say, if you offer that arrangement now, you’ll attract better talent!

As for not figuring things out without technology, well, why is that bad? As long as they can find the answer, does it matter if they thought of it on their own or Googled it? And the fact that they know how to use all this tech means they can do things in a minute that would take me an hour!

I never thought of myself as unchanging, and stuck in the past. I know what “finsta” and “Snapchat” and “Pandora” are. But today was a realization, and one I didn’t particularly care for. I think I’ll go online and buy one of those new robotic bartending machines and have it fix me a strong one!