FINALLY, I HAVE RISEN TO THE BOTTOM

Today (8/30) I have turned 75 years of age and that is great because I am now very much a minority. Being in less than 3% of the population, I can now officially claim to be a victim. With my new minority status, I, like other minorities before me, feel compelled to impose my will and desires on the majority, and because I am a minority, the majority, for some bizarre reason, will feel a moral obligation to bend over backwards to my demands.

So, I believe that since there are more women than men in the later years, I should be able to marry as many women as I wish, and would expect the Supreme Court to allow that to occur in all 50 states, for no particular reason other than it's what I want. Then our new little family should be able, and even encouraged, to adopt any 50-year-old orphans looking for a home. I would expect to be able to commandeer any main street, organize, and participate in a yearly Geezer Pride Parade with participants proudly riding in wheelchairs or pushing walkers while shamelessly wearing open bathrobes, oxygen tanks and adult underwear. Anyone finding this spectacle eccentric and slightly gonzo, and who would be inclined to say so out loud, should be restrained by the police and called an ageophobe.

I believe if I have any problem supporting my new little, but old, family (which if I do, shame on the government), I should be able to get most any job I wish because of age hiring quotas (10% percent of your employees should be 75 or older) in place. Also, a company's ability to fire me regardless of how slow I am, how much I forget, or how much I never knew, should be pretty much legally eliminated. Considering my new age handicap and what I deserve for having it, if I don't choose to get a job, maybe I could using my minority quota to leap-frog over many more eligible people and get into an Ivy League university and major in Viking Studies.

Of course for me to live the life to which I have, or wish to, become accustomed, I would expect to get (I am a minority, you remember) most every job I apply for. My minimum wage should be in the $100K range. Now, I know I'm not worth that, and that this money has to come from somewhere, but I don't care. That's not my problem. I'm a victim because I am a minority, and it's the responsibility of people who have money to figure out how to get me what I want. Why? Because I want it...

As one gets older the eyes go, the reflexes are dimmed and judgment gets impaired, but those are no reasons for 75 plusers being stopped by the police in inordinate numbers while going 20 MPH under the speed limit. If this obvious harassment continues, we seniors will have to engage in a 1000 Walker March to demonstrate against being unduly targeted for traffic violations. When I was a majority and had no one but myself to blame things on, I used to think being stopped by the police was my fault, but now since I am a minority, therefore a victim, I know the real reason I'm being stopped is DWO (Driving While Old) .

I would also expect to see an elder as one of the main characters on all TV show or movies. I would also expect the police and fire departments to employ a percent of the seniors living in the community they represent. It would be a big benefit if they could pass the mental and physical criteria for the police or fire job, but if they can't, so what? Isn't it more important to placate the vocal minority than to protect the silent majority?

Lastly, since I'm running out of energy to write any more, and my government provided ghost-writer is useless, are we not sick and tired of all of the young policemen shooting the aged? Don't they realize that Old Lives Matter?

Boy! these next 25 years are going to be fun.

RESPONSIBILITY

It seems that I have had some degree of responsibility most of my adult life. Not really much more than anybody else, I guess, but since it was mine I felt it more than I'd feel somebody else's. When I worked for the telephone company the responsibility I felt was for my family. When the boys were gone from home, and I left corporate life, we started our own business and the responsibility then was to get business. After I self-retired from the speaking business and got into Lab rescue, it seemed the responsibility got more personal. I had living creatures depending on me for their very life. We also at that time, to compound the responsibility for living things, had two horses, two cats and seven dogs.

It was soon after that my folks began to show the effects of age. Being their only living child the responsibility for them became mine, and I was 1000 miles away. I handled dad’s financial matters, arranged for and sent the payment to his care giver, made the decision about mother going to the nursing home, talked to dad once or twice a day, and flew to visit them every three months. Being a long-distance care giver, I didn't have the physical involvement of their day-to-day care, but not being there intensified my mental commitment and feeling of responsibility. During this period I spent my time writing a blog, answering emails, commenting on Facebook, exercising and doing "chores" around the property. Their future was always on my mind. (How sick might they get, would their money last, etc.) My parents were my number one responsibility. I made life and death decisions for them; they really had no one else, and I was a long way away.

The last couple of years I began to feel the weight of the imagined and real responsibility for my folks and our remaining animals. I then wondered what different things I would do, how I would live my life differently with little or no responsibility. Without my folks and with minimal animals, would that boulder, lifted off my shoulder, free me up to travel, volunteer or write the great American novel?

My mother died first in the nursing home. All but one of our dogs died and dad deteriorated enough to also go to the nursing home. I arranged for his former care giver to visit him in the nursing home because he desperately needed some contact with his past life. Dad died ten months after entering the home.

There I was, no parents and only one dog and one cat to have"responsibility" for. Now is the time for the new Tom to emerge. All my thoughts and ideas of what I would do when this time came were ready to be put into play.

One year later, not only have I not "blossomed," things are actually a bit worse. How could that happen? This is one of my most profound life lessons. Responsibility was not stopping me from doing things; it was what made me do things. Responsibility was the glue that held it all together. Yes, I spent time writing a blog, answering emails, commenting on Facebook, exercising and doing "chores," but that just filled in the time between engaging in my real and very important purpose in life, caring for my folks. Without a meaningful purpose, am I destined to spend the rest of my life writing a blog, answering emails, commenting on Facebook exercising and doing "chores?"

As the saying goes, "Be careful what you wish for."

I'll figure something out.

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After I finished the draft of the above article I was listening to a Podcast of Freakonomics ( based on three fun Freakonomics books) . The subject was thinking like children. Listening to this completely changed my thinking and answered the concerns I had just written about. As a child I had no real responsibility, I got up in the morning and took the day as it came. From child to senior came the responsibility portion of life. Think about this, think about how alike a 100-year-old person is to a 1-year-old child. (I'm sure I don't have to go into detail. ) I discovered the obvious, I am hanging on to a portion of my life that is gone, I need to resurrect the inner child and get up each morning and take the day as it comes. No longer am I caring for my folks, watching over animals, writing books, giving speeches to hundreds of people. The main job I may have for the day is to rearrange my sock drawer, and that's OK. Setting all the motivational stories about Colonel Sanders aside, to reach retirement age and look back at what we have left behind, to look at how the world will be different because we were in it and to accept the fact that there is a good chance we will not discover a cure for cancer, win an Oscar or start a wildly successful chicken franchise, may well be the answer to an older life well lived.

I guess my responsibility now it to get up each morning and do the hell out of what the day brings. I can do that.