‘I’m not saying I’m old but I make sure I’m nowhere near the curb on rubbish day.’
A lot of people forget about the silent generation – you know the ones I mean – newspapers print stories about everyone else but those around 80 or more, yet this group of people have seen such vast changes that possibly won’t ever be seen again. They are only in the paper if they’ve been robbed, had an accident in the car or survived a burning house fire.
They have a story to tell, but you don’t hear them often talking about the past, because nobody wants to listen to an older person.
They grew up with motor vehicles that never had the advantages we see today in the modern vehicles. Conveniences that were never heard of for the home or the traveling and work experiences that are on offer today.
As I watch this generation try and rewrite our history, I’m sure of one thing: It will be misspelled and have no punctuation.
Those of the silent generation take it a bit easy now. It’s generally too hard to do some of the things that we would like to do and as I’ve got older, people think that I’ve become lazy, but if truth be told I’m just being more energy efficient.
Talking about energy, how many older folk of the silent generation find it hard to live life. Just eating is a trial, getting those plastic covers off the yogurt container of a morning seems hard now. What about squeezing the new bottle of tomato sauce, Whoops!, forgot about the plastic seal, our kids remind us.
How about the tin of sardines, once there was a key, very easy to use, now there’s a ring pull thing that should be easy, but it’s hard on the old fingers, we resort to using a fork or knife handle to shift it, but it’s stubborn and we break the ring pull off completely, now we have to wreck the lid to get it off?
We’ve stopped using cans now, too hard, but unfortunately some of the bottles now have a seal that Tarzan (who’s he?) couldn’t shift.
Do you feel useless? Well remember it took 20 years, trillions of dollars, thousands of lives and four presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
Turns out that being a senior person is mostly just googling how to do stuff. Dr. Google is right there if you have a crook shoulder or sore back or you want to see if that ache is worth going to the doctor (that is if you can get in within the next few weeks), or just wait it out and see if it goes away. At least Dr. Google can give you a little confidence if you make sure that you look up a good site.
Diets! Well I’ve been on two simultaneous diets of late. I wasn’t getting enough food on one. What about those frozen foods you can buy. Certainly makes it easy to cook up a meal for the family, but they too have those awful strips of plastic to seal them, I’ve resorted to a pair of pliers to open it.
As for weight control, I’ve put my scales in the bathroom corner and that’s where the little liar will stay until it apologises.
For those of you who have learnt to be internet savvy, I find my mind is like an internet browser. At least 18 open tabs, three of them are frozen, and I have no clue where the music is coming from. So think of the silent generation, they too find it hard.
