who don’t know their information is 30 years out of date?
Mother-in-Law to wife: “Oh come on. You can get a hired anywhere you want. You have a bachelor’s degree.”
Yeah, bless 'em. In the late eighties, I took a part time job collecting chemical waste from some labs. My grandmother offered to pay me not to continue the job because that had to be terribly dangerous and icky.
It had been awhile since she’d had a paying job. She thought I was making two dollars an hour.
(I got to use the line: “But Grandma, chemical waste is in my blood.”)
“You have a master’s degree. That means you can teach anywhere you want!”
“I shouldn’t keep you on the phone for so long, since it’s long distance.”
“That new Buick Lucerne is nice! It must go for at least ten thousand dollars!”
Old people English: “carfare”, “oleo”, “dungarees”, “ditto”, “icebox”, “radar range”, “colored people”, and so on.
Hey, if you’re so down on them, feel free to slide those $12 birthday checks over to me.
At least their old Lasalles run great.
I, for one, welcome our denture-wearing, Depends-buying overlords.
This is pitworthy??? Ah, well, speaking as one who can already detect some of that tendency in myself, I think it’s a matter of choosing what to spend time and energy learning. I think I’m pretty good with computer applications. In fact, I do pretty well in a job which requires the ability to make efficient use of Microsoft Excel and Access to produce reports. But I don’t like ATMs and can barely make a call on a cell phone. But when my 86-year-old mother was recently moved into a nursing home while recovering from spinal fusion surgery, we got her a cell phone rather than pay installation charges. And even though she had never used one before, she’s doing quite well with it now. Necessity is quite a motivator.
In the South that takes on other elements as well.
One of my best friends recently traded in her 14 year old/300,000 mile car on a much newer one. Her mother asked how much she got and the friend told her- something like $1000- and the mother was appalled. “It’s worth more than that- don’t you have any colored friends you could have sold it to?” And this was said “in front of God and everybody” at a party. (It’s inconceivable to her that her daughter’s black friends are professionals who don’t drive clunkers unless it’s by choice.)
I revere Harper Lee as one of my home state’s virgin icons along with Helen Keller (no idea what the hymenic status was on either but both were unmarried with no live-in romantic partners) but was disappointed at the old fogeyness of one of her very rare post Mockingbird pieces for Oprah’s magazine. The jist was “we didn’t have computers and Ipods in my day and we by gum liked it that way!”
Of course seeing how her 20 gazillion copy book was about racial injustice in the 1930s I don’t think she really views all change as bad, but I do remember thinking she was selling the younger generations short. I detest twitterization as much as most of my age, but I don’t think ignorance is more widespread than it used to be so much as it’s more visible. Plus- iPod and Twitter may well be for the worse, but they’re here to stay so no use kvetching, just try to work within the paradigm. (And you’re complaining about the lack of intellectual stimulation so you send your entry to Oprah’s magazine? Nothing against Oprah, but you’re Harper Lee- ANYBODY would print your grocery list, send it to New York Times or Atlantic Monthly or some struggling literary mag that needs the boost in sales.)
That said, I’ve known some octogenarians who’d surprise hell out of most people. My aunt probably knows more about Britney Spears and the Anna Nicole case than I even care to (tabloid TV junkie) and flat out knows what $100 will and won’t by, and I’ve known any number of senior citizens who can surf hell out of the Internet. (I exchanged emails this week with a 90 year old distant cousin I’ve never met who answered some of my questions about ancestry dot com.)
Which is one of the more frustrating aspects I suppose: they don’t have to let themselves become outdated.
Depending on our fate, all of us will be old someday, as will our rotator cuffs and our ability to adjust to a younger society. I don’t see the point of the OP as a Pitting.
A lack of knowledge of how to use an Ipod or Twitter, or a lack of knowledge of Anna Nicole and Brittney Spears is what makes people outdated in your mind? I suspect Harper Lee would be a lot more dissapointed in you than you are in her.
If this is indicative of your reading skills I should perhaps tell you the main character in Harper Lee’s bestseller wasn’t really a dead bird.
Ditto is old-fashioned? I must have gone over the hill forty years early.
When I venture to share with 80 year old Mom that I’d love to have a nice little part-time job somewhere near home, she always suggests I walk into the local mega-mart and offer to do food demonstrations. Decades ago her best friend had an electric skillet, did indeed have such a job, and demonstrated things like L’il Smokies on toothpicks; she travelled from store to store, set her own hours, and “made good money” doing this. Uh. The grocery store already has dozens of employees who just LOVE to hand out samples of potato salad. Mom always urges me to just march in and offer my mad cooking skillz, as if there was a worldwide shortage of sample hander-outers :rolleyes:.
Are you, like me, afraid the seething rage will melt your monitor? sigh I long for the kindler, gentler days of the Pit when the elderly could walk freely and unafraid amongst us.
Until the shooting started. Then you found out quick which ones were the hypochondriacs.
There was actually quite a vehement and upsetting conversation behind my OP. One of the participants was reduced nearly to tears by the end of it.
That may provide some context re the pitworthiness of it.
But yeah, as I worded it, the post could just as well have gone into MPSIMS I suppose.
I’ve read the book a number of times, and I know exactly what the title refers to.
It’s a sin to tell you to fuck off.
I’ll venture a guess that this “ditto” refers to a form of mechanical reproduction of documents, not a slang term meaning “Same here.”
Man, I haaaaaaaaate old people. Hate 'em. They’re the only thing worse than little kids, and I don’t even have words to describe my hatred of little kids. And Christmas. And kittens.*
*This is a lie, I love kittens. Dead serious about the rest of it, though.
This tired old joke still?