Life Lesson #30: Old people are weird....

I was going to post about something completely different than I found myself driving past a group of elderly citizens walking around what was clearly a not new car but newly washed car admiring it. Old people are so strange.
For instance, why do they insist on watering their lawn with a hose?

How pointless is that? Why not just hook it up to a sprinkler? You'd think they wouldn't want to waste time given that they don't have much of it left.And why are they always dressed in long pants and long sleeved shirts? OR if they are in shorts they are wearing socks that go all the way up to their shorts. It's inexplicable. And why dont' old people tan? I've never met an old person with a tan, they are always pasty white, veins sticking out every which way like a soggy road map of LA.
Don't even get me started on old people driving. My grandpa is the worst. Somewhere along the line someone apparently gifted him with the right to do whatever he pleases on the road and everyone else has to obey his road rules. He is not allowed to drive when Gus is in the car. This rule came about after he made a left hand turn on a red light onto a one way. True story as I was in the car when it happened. He claimed it was legal. I was too stunned to come up with a reply then I was too grateful to be alive to argue. My thought process is since they were around when the DMV created the rules, they think they create them as they go and break them as they feel like it. Or since their time on Earth is already limited, they think, "Screw it! I've paid my dues now you have to pay yours by driving behind me while I go 10 mph in a 35 mph zone!"
To be fair, it isn't just people 70 years plus. I feel it is hard to comprehend (yet another hat worthy word) anyone outside of my generation. People who are my parents' age, mid-50's, even baffle me as, though not as much as people my grandparents' age. But people in their 50's, for instance, have survived a lot of crap, the JFK assassination, 'Nam, Watergate, the Beatles, the invention of the computer...yet they still seem extremely resistant to change and slow to adapt (maybe it was the 60s and 70s that just royally f*ed them for life). I will give their generation this: their Hollywood men and women age phenomenally well, at least the ones that haven't died of OD.

BUT this generation fights aging with creams and surgery, exercise and clothes that don't have iron-on kittens. Apparently, there is some mystical age that you stop fighting your age and embrace it with AARP cards, handicap stickers and Senior Citizen Discounts. It's at this age that you insist everyone younger than you treat you with respect, that all music is too loud, that you are the only person who is right in the world, that back in your day everything was perfect, you talk at an incredibly loud volume though you clearly do not have a hearing problem. I like to call this the Murtaugh Age because you become way "too old for [most] shit".

Regardless, old people are a mystery unto themselves. They believe what they've been told, regardless if it was 30 years ago and science proves differently. They go with their gut over actual facts. They think their frost bitten toe can predict the weather and that their cat is psychic. They think that soaking your feet in olive oil will cure a cold (really, Grandma?) or that having wet hair in cold weather will make you sick (pretty sure it's viruses but agree to disagree).
Now I know some old people are just adorable, like Mr. McGoo, or hilarious, like those Golden Girls, but they are pretty rare, at least in my experience. The old men who call you sweetheart are endearing until they start pinching your ass and the old women who teach you how to bake are nice until they start swatting your hand because you aren't doing it right.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the elderly, they've done great things and they have great stories, bake like none other and can get away with anything because of their age. All I'm saying is, well, they're weird, off a bit and with each creak of that rocker, they get a little further off kilt and I'm not blaming them for that, hell, aging is hard and it sucks. All I'm asking is that they cover up their nasty pastiness and for crying out loud, GET OFF THE ROAD! YOU CAN'T DRIVE!