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May 17, 2004 I think I’d be pretty angry if I were an old person. In nearly every other aspect of our lives, old things are respected, even revered. We fawn over classic cars, we re-watch classic movies again and again, and we even devote an entire television show – the “Antiques Roadshow” – to the appraisal of cherished artifacts from days gone by: APPRAISER: And what have you brought us today? OWNER: It’s a coffee table that looks very old. APPRAISER: Well, let me start by telling you a long and VERY boring story about the coffee table. It was made in the 17th Century by a Hungarian chisel specialist named Glerg Hoffman, who lived alone on the side of a steep hill. Judging by the counter-clockwise beveled grooves on the underside, it’s safe to assume Glerg was a Pisces. The legs are crafted from the finest… OWNER: Say, this is fantastic, but could you tell me what the hell it’s worth? APPRAISER: Well, this particular coffee table would normally sell for three hundred thousand dollars. OWNER: Woo hoo! APPRAISER: However, your piece has a micro-fracture the size of a quark in one of the table legs. So it’s only worth six dollars. Thank you for wasting your time here at the “Antiques Roadshow”. Ha ha! Sadly, we treat our elderly population far more shabbily than any Hungarian coffee table. We ridicule nearly everything about the elderly, from the smells they emit to the way they drive. We outfit them in plaid shirts so hideous, the seamstresses who crafted them probably suffered incurable retina damage. Their pants are too high, their socks are too low, and they can’t go five minutes without coughing up a hack ball the size of an orange. No wonder they’re so cranky all the time. The most inglorious treatment of all comes when, after a certain age, the elderly are herded up in pickup trucks (or vehicles with similar old person carrying capacity) and placed in nursing homes. The elderly aren’t fond of the entire exercise, though most of them don’t even realize they’re in a nursing home until they wake up from one of their 46-hour naps and realize they’ve been uprooted. “Where the hell am I?” is one of the funnier old person sayings you’ll hear. My experience with nursing homes is limited to a class trip we took in third grade. all I remember from the excursion was an awful lot of card playing and dirty jokes. If there are two things old people do well, it’s playing cards, and telling the most obscene jokes you’ll ever hear. On that single two-hour class trip, I learned how to cheat at Baccarat AND what a priest, a pickle and a 1981 Datsun have in common. You just can’t get that kind of information anywhere else. Fortunately, there are living options beyond nursing homes. Retirement communities are popping up everywhere these days, as scores of Baby Boomers trade in their business suits for tracksuits. To entice potential customers, many retirement communities have even tried developing catchy slogans (“Spruce Meadows: The Perfect Place To Die!”) When you arrive at a retirement community, you instantly realize that you’re in the most sterile, boring place in the world not named “Idaho”. That’s because most retirement locales have strict rules banning anything that may startle the locals, like color or sound. Other observances may include: -- Wider streets, to accommodate the elderly’s penchant for driving cars the size of tugboats -- Speed limits not exceeding 15 miles per hour; this is inconsequential, since nothing in a retirement community ever reaches 15 miles per hour, at any time -- 6:30 p.m. curfews, except for trips to the hospital (medical emergency) or to certain retail outlets (Metamucil emergency) What you’ll also find is that the housing in a retirement village is remarkably affordable. A standard two-bedroom bungalow with garage runs between forty and fifty thousand dollars. That won’t even buy you a hot dog cart in most major cities. And in New York, that won’t even buy you a hot dog. In a perfect world, the elderly would get to choose where they spend the twilights of their lives. But we live in a world where brain surgeons and paramedics earn less money than game-show contestants or stunt monkeys. So we’ll have to make do with the current situation for now. But fear not, aging reader, because things are getting better. Retirement villages are getting nicer by the day, and have become more affordable, too. Some even have nursing homes on site, so you can run in, have your gall bladder removed, play a few hands of poker, and then return to your house in time for Antiques Roadshow. ------------ About the author: James Bisson is a reporter/editor for Canadian Press in Toronto. So yes, he does have a real job. And no, he's not in a mental institution. Yet. Email James A. Bisson: jbisson@cp.org Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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