Oldies

What’s the one thing old people always do?

Watch the weather.

OK, so, yeah, they do watch the weather, but other than that, what’s the one thing old people do?

They talk about their health. Mostly with other old people. Because young people don’t want to hear about your aches and pains. They’ve got enough on their plate. Likely what you’ll hear from them is “Don’t they have a pill for that?” Or better yet, “Ask Claude. That’s what I do.”

Old people don’t get their diagnoses from Claude. They should, ’cause it would save a lot of time. But what else do old people have but time, however dwindling that supply inevitably is. Nonetheless, they have plenty of time to look up their symptoms on the WebMD, Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins sites, all of which convinces them that the tingling in their foot is Reynaud’s disease; followed by visits to their regular doctor and a specialist, who say everything looks fine and why are you wasting my 15 minutes; which is followed by looking up homemade recipes to cure tingly foot disease.

And then the next day, complain to a person of similar age how crappy medical care is these days.

Mind you, that’s not the only thing old people complain about, if I am anything to go by.

Top of the list: Too many apps.

They’ve got an app for everything. To get something done, all you have to do is talk into your phone. My children would say, what’s wrong with that? But for me, it’s just too much. Do you know that at some concerts you go to nowadays, they won’t take a paper ticket? You have to have your ticket on your phone. Really? What about the poor people?

Next on the list: Far too many crime documentaries on Netflix. I understand — the pandemic. It threw studios off their game. Forced them to make series they wouldn’t normally make. All I can hope is that Netflix will soon exhaust itself of the seemingly endless supply of these things shot during Covid. Can we move on?

Old people, generally, love to complain about the new music. I’m not one of them. I so easily could be, but for the promise I made to myself the night our family watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. My mother’s stated opinion after their performance was that it wasn’t real music and they were a flash in the pan. I, of course, at 10 years old, thought they were the best thing ever. I swore then that I would never criticize the younger generation’s music. It’s all music. What’s not to like? OK, plenty, but a promise is a promise.

Last thing: Drones. OK, so maybe old people aren’t actually complaining about drones. But they should be. I mean, has anybody thought about what’s going to happen when everyone’s deliveries arrive by drone? That’s a lot of drones. Are they going to have lanes up in the sky that the drones have to keep to? What if they don’t?

Breaking News: Just in, residents of a quiet suburb cry, “Manna from heaven” as a drone ran the median and crashed into an oncoming drone, scattering groceries across a four-block area in leafy Podunckville.

Actually, I’m not all that worried about it. If the Jetsons could figure it out, so can we.

This morning, Procol Harum …