What DO Old People Want

Can't figure out what Old People want ... I had a Dream, last night. I and M were taking someone who was struggling with finding meaningful work to two other people ... one who we had known more through her husband and who was successfully engaged, now, and another who was still having difficulty. Then M woke up with a leg-cramp and the dream ended.

The Last Quarter is jam-packed with quotidian little details ... Living ... Working .... Doctor-visiting .... Grandchild-chasing .... Detailing (like Gardening and Bill-paying and all the little madnesses of life). Today, M and I are spending a couple of hours as Special Peeps at grandkids' school. They do all these cutesie things like interviewing Old Folk like they came from a different planet.

"Grandma, Grandpa .... 

When you were young, were there newspapers? 

Did people smooch at the Malls? 

And just what was smooching?

Was it like Twerk-free Twerking" 

How do I tell them that there were no Malls, except that strip mall just outside of Athens which we called the OEdipus Complex? Old age is about bad jokes, too. Jokes that nobody gets. How do I tell them that free-range hormones flowed through our bodies in most ways just like the hormones that are driving them to think of lots more than the Quadratic Formula .... with its funny looking +/- sign and thiggamajigs called square roots.

"Grandma, Grandpa ... 

I know where the square root button is on MY calculator."

Yeah, yeah, Kid. Lemme tell you about my Slide Rule. It not only did logging but even anti-logging. It was ecologically sensitive (another bad joke) ... didn't require any of those batteries that fill up landfills and it had a middle slider that twerked with the outside one all day and it could multiply or divide and if you were really turned on it could do powers ... 'May the power be with you.'

"But Grandma, Grandpa ...

 You said it didn't require power or batteries ... 

Maybe the power wasn't with you."

Yeah, yeah, Kid. Wish my expressive aphasia wasn't handicapping my speech, so that I could explain it to ya. Hey, Sweetie, I'd go find my Slide Rule if I could remember where I put the Ginkgo that would help me remember what drawer my slide rule ... nevermind. Nevermind. Next time yer in the Science Museum, ask about ancient computational methods and the comeback of Orgasmatrons.

The truth is -- you got it -- when we were young, we never twerked or smoked any whacky weed and your parents were conceived with the help of a Turkey Baster and we spent our first twenty years reading non-fiction geological studies while we ogled rock formations in our boy and girl scout uniforms

(I don't have the heart to tell these Lil' Spawnsters that it was my son-in-law's and their Daddy's mouth that, as far as I know, first uttered the words: A Sperm is a Terrible Thing to Baste! Think I'll go make another morning cocktail: Serutan with a goodly dash of Geritol and a Prune Juice chaser to make life sweet.)

Well, youngins. It's 6:36 ... dog's walked ... dishes put away ... time for a morning nap. I'll see your cousins on Sunday. Think I'll tell'em about the discovery of the two speed osciullating fan and other techno breakthroughs.