My boys are the youngest old men I know. I’ve never known kids to have so many geriatric medical issues during all my days. I mean, I have to give them the most ergonomic seats so their backs don’t hurt them the next day. They wake up in the morning with stiff necks. They complain about being dizzy (but refuse to drink water). They are afraid to lift too much weight because they don’t want to hurt their joints.
Have I gone crazy? I’m the one turning fifty. I’m the one with sore joints, plantar fasciitis, and constant lower back pain. But you don’t see me bitching about it around the dinner table. How could I? I can’t even get a word in edgewise.
Is this a generational thing? Have gen Zers and gen Alpha become the equivalent of teenage old people? They post images of their goiters to the Gram and stream videos of their proper device posture and tricks to avoid carpal tunnel to Tiktok? What are these kids gonna be doing when they actually turn fifty? Maybe by then they’ll be heads in a stasis tube or something.
As a kid I used to complain about hay-fever. When it came to bucking hay, my reward for all that complaining was I got to drive the truck after blacking out the first time…each day. Even then, it seemed like a surprise to my dad when I would pass out the next day. Sissy. When are you gonna get over this whole allergy thing?
Eventually, I did get over it, when I moved away and went to university. (Not surprisingly, there wasn’t any hay on the University of Montana campus.)
Okay, so asking your kids to black out on a regular basis, in order to stockpile hay for the winter, is possibly negligent parenting. But all I’m asking is for the opportunity to be the old man for a few decades. I’ve already done the young buck thing. Been there, done that. I’m over it. Buck hey, pass out, drive truck.
My kids don’t get to skip forward four decades and go from preteen to old man in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t work that way. Or at least it shouldn’t. This is my golden window to direct the young bucks and have them jump to it. “Lift that barrel. Buck that bail. Wedge this thingy into that thangy, and put your shoulder into it!” And yet, here I am listening to all this geriatric complaining from my kids when I’m the one who is supposed to be rambling on about how some damn doctor nearly killed me with damn Levaquin (okay, maybe that phase doesn’t officially start until I’m eighty).
Bah. Maybe I’m just sour and lack compassion. But isn’t that my right? Isn’t that the benefit of turning fifty? In my day, we didn’t have cell phones. We scheduled a time to meet someone and we met them there when we said we would meet them there. And we liked it!
In my day, we didn’t have cool ranch flavor chips. We had bar-b-q and sour cream and onion. And we liked it! In my day, we didn’t have Swifties. We had a Madonna in a pointy-cone-bra that DIDN’T shoot sparks. And we liked it!
I want my old-man-moment! I’m not ready to pass off the baton. You whippersnappers have to hold it together for another thirty-five years. I mean our upcoming election is gonna be between an 82-year-old and a 78-year-old for goodness’ sake. I want my thirty years of being an old coot, and no amount of teenage whininess is gonna cheat me out of it [shakes fist menacingly]. So all you gen alpha tykes can get off my lawn and go put your shoulder into it!
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