# What's with old people **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 15, 2009, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063 "2009-07-15T00:21:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Ceejaytee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ceejaytee/32/2956_2.png) [@Ceejaytee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ceejaytee)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2009, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/101 "2009-07-17T20:30:57Z")
My dad collects natural health pamphlets, you know, the kind of thing that says, “Cure cancer by eating the rinds of citrus fruit! More information on p. 35 of a book you’ll have to pay $20 for!” “How the medical establishment is keeping you sick!” They pile up in his apartment and eventually, when the piles grow big, he puts them neatly into a box, writes my name and address in beautifully clear block lettering and mails them to me. I am expected to read them all, cure all of my illnesses and then pass them along to someone else. There’s an unopened box of them in my bedroom right now that arrived a couple of days ago. Well, I guess it’s better than having them pile up at his place taking over all available surfaces. He’s a magazine/newsletter hoarder. ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2009, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/102 "2009-07-17T21:08:18Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > Learn how to use a cell phone properly–as in how to hang up and/or charge the battery. I know my mom can hang up her cell phone, but she still doesn’t know how to check her voice mail. She was at a meeting here and told us to call her and we’d get together once she knew the full schedule. I called, probably while she was in a session and had her phone off. I left a message, and nothing. Called the next day at a time when she might be between sessions, left a message, nothing. Lather, rinse, repeat for 5 days. Finally I get an irate email from her: “I’m back home and disappointed that I didn’t hear from you.” 1. The phone lines work both ways, you know! 2. I left messages every day! “Oh, I can’t check messages.” Is there something wrong with the phone? “No, I just never learned how and I don’t want to know.” OK… My dad is one of those who thinks every woman who crosses his path is his nanny or something. We went for a week in London, and he expected me to know where all of his stuff was, or how to change the batteries and memory card in his camera. My mom deals with all that for him, and my grandmother before her, and he just didn’t know how to handle my “it’s your passport, what did you do with it,” or “well, on my camera, the batteries go here, but I’ve never seen your model before…” Yeah, shoving the camera at me and saying that “your mother knows what to do” is always helpful, too. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/103 "2009-07-18T00:19:46Z")
One thing we haven’t touched on: calling businesses, stores, restaurants, schools and other institutions and landmarks by old names or tenants. We’re not talking about the usual pattern of using the old name for something that’s now named after Martin Luther King or Cesar Chavez; that tends to be cross-generational. Instead, we’re talking about calling Kmart “Kresge’s” or the Tonight Show “The Johnny Carson Show”, decades after Carson left. In the eyes of many old people in Buffalo, I didn’t get my undergraduate degree at Buffalo State College. Nope, I got it at State Teacher’s College, which changed its name to Buffalo State College in _1962_. I wonder if old people use old names for landmarks because name changes just weren’t commonplace in the era they grew up in. Also, with many butchering the names of well-known businesses and institutions that were founded in the past two decades; “Let’s get something to eat at that Olive Branch, and then stop at that Barney Noble’s Bookstore.” ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/104 "2009-07-18T02:26:28Z")
Old people used to know everything there was to know about anything. Back when we were young, that is. Then we grew up and realized we didn’t know everything after all. But a lot of us are still trying to learn; it would be nice if people who do know everything would offer to teach us instead of forever putting us down. Youth is wasted on the young. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/105 "2009-07-18T02:44:21Z")
> [@LouisB](#): > > Old people used to know everything there was to know about anything. Back when we were young, that is. Then we grew up and realized we didn’t know everything after all. But a lot of us are still trying to learn; it would be nice if people who do know everything would offer to teach us instead of forever putting us down. > > Youth is wasted on the young. This thread is not about people who’s still trying to learn about things, it’s about those who have allowed their brains to fossilize, 20 y.old or 120 y.o. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/106 "2009-07-18T02:50:20Z")
> [@Ceejaytee](#): > > My dad collects natural health pamphlets, you know, the kind of thing that says, “Cure cancer by eating the rinds of citrus fruit! More information on p. 35 of a book you’ll have to pay $20 for!” “How the medical establishment is keeping you sick!” They pile up in his apartment and eventually, when the piles grow big, he puts them neatly into a box, writes my name and address in beautifully clear block lettering and mails them to me. I am expected to read them all, cure all of my illnesses and then pass them along to someone else. There’s an unopened box of them in my bedroom right now that arrived a couple of days ago. > > Well, I guess it’s better than having them pile up at his place taking over all available surfaces. He’s a magazine/newsletter hoarder. Bless your dad’s heart, he’s just like my mom. “Cure 100 ailments with vinegar!” And that natural remedies book by Kevin Trudeau? Mom sent away for it, of course . :rolleyes: … Mom also collects catalogs and actually sends away for things she thinks are “so cute” from, say, Whorewear for the Aspiring Whore. She’ll try the stuff on and then _I_ have to fill out the return form, box up the ill-fitting sleezeware, and take it to the post office… Same with The Catalog For People With Bad Feet (which is actually starting to look pretty good to me). ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/107 "2009-07-18T03:05:19Z")
> [@The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](#): > > There’s some sort of weird ancestral collapse here on the SDMB, because Zsofia, Chimera, lorene, Overlyverbose and I are all siblings. > [@C.Montgomery\_Burns](#): > > My dad is also incredibly stubborn about technology made after the late 70’s or so. He can’t understand how a DVD player works, doesn’t understand digital cameras, and proudly doesn’t know how a computer. He refuses to even sit at a computer, even to just look at something, and his defense of this is “I don’t know anything about that!” Yeah, you won’t know how it works if you don’t quit refusing to be near one. This may explain why he will ask somebody else to e-mail something, then say “You’d better call so-and-so and make sure that went through!” > > My dad is only 59 years old. Well, I think I need to go hug _my_ dad, because you and I are definitely **not** related. My dad has been telling me about how much faster the new wireless adapter card for his computer helps him download compared to the old one. He’s 59 too. But speaking of old people, my Great-Grandmother used to run through the names thing too. My entirely life she’d say “Geraldine, Joanne…dammit! I meant Shannon” before getting it right. I can understand calling me my mom’s name because we’re both redheads, but Aunt Gerry and I look nothing alike. At least all her dogs had been male, so I wasn’t called King or Tiny first:D ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/108 "2009-07-18T16:18:01Z")
> [@The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](#): > > There’s some sort of weird ancestral collapse here on the SDMB, because Zsofia, Chimera, lorene, Overlyverbose and I are all siblings. Oh, that’s exactly what Dottie said! You remember Dottie, right? ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2009, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/109 "2009-07-18T17:39:42Z")
> [@C.Montgomery\_Burns](#): > > My dad is also incredibly stubborn about technology made after the late 70’s or so. He can’t understand how a DVD player works, doesn’t understand digital cameras, and proudly doesn’t know how a computer. He refuses to even sit at a computer, even to just look at something, and his defense of this is “I don’t know anything about that!” Yeah, you won’t know how it works if you don’t quit refusing to be near one. This may explain why he will ask somebody else to e-mail something, then say “You’d better call so-and-so and make sure that went through!” > > My dad is only 59 years old. Until you revealed his age, I was guessing you were Megan McCain. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2009, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/110 "2009-07-19T02:32:16Z")
> [@Frodo](#): > > This thread is not about people who’s still trying to learn about things, it’s about those who have allowed their brains to fossilize, 20 y.old or 120 y.o. The title of the thread is, I believe, “What’s up with old people?” No exemptions specified. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2009, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/111 "2009-07-19T02:35:37Z")
> [@LouisB](#): > > The title of the thread is, I believe, “What’s up with old people?” No exemptions specified. The title of the thread is half of a sentence; the second half is in the OP, and reads, “who don’t know their information is 30 years out of date?” If you don’t go around thinking and behaving like it’s still 1979, then you’re not the topic of the thread. It’s OK, really. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/112 "2009-07-19T02:51:22Z")
> [@LouisB](#): > > Youth is wasted on the young. [That’s such a shame](http://www.theonion.com/content/news/grandmother_classifies_79_of?utm_source=a-section). ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2009, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/113 "2009-07-19T03:24:46Z")
I love the elderly and respect most of them quite a bit. Did any of you have a Grandma or Grandpa that yelled at the people on TV? My Grandma, who was very, very, kind and pleasant, used to condemn Bill Clinton whenever he was on TV. This was when he was President and his affair with Lewinsky had come out. She’d see him and say, “You wicked, wicked, man!” and so forth. I loved her. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2009, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/114 "2009-07-19T03:42:21Z")
My dear grandpa, who was sharp as a tack until he died, was certain, and I mean CERTAIN, that Pat Sajak has a pedal that he can push with his foot. It makes the wheel hit Bankrupt and he does it when the contestants get cocky. To this day when I watch Wheel of Fortune and some cocky ass sumbitch is getting close to the black space I yell “There he goes!” ---
**Author:** ![Caricci](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@Caricci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caricci)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2009, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/115 "2009-07-19T04:50:51Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I love the elderly and respect most of them quite a bit. > > Did any of you have a Grandma or Grandpa that yelled at the people on TV? My Grandma, who was very, very, kind and pleasant, used to condemn Bill Clinton whenever he was on TV. This was when he was President and his affair with Lewinsky had come out. > > She’d see him and say, “You wicked, wicked, man!” and so forth. > > I loved her. My grandmother told a televised Ronald Regan “Ahhh! Go scratch your ass!” once, during the convention where he was vying against Gerald Ford for the nomination. Four years later she loved RR and denied ever doing this. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2009, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/116 "2009-07-19T07:22:26Z")
This is on behalf of my younger co-workers. What’s equally aggravating is old people who think that if it didn’t happen in your lifetime, there’s no way you’ve heard of it. Plenty of These Kids Today know what Chappaquiddick was. And who Walter Cronkite was. And who the Beatles were. They may not have come to this knowledge the same way, like knowing about the Beatles mostly because of the anthology, but they do know. So there’s no need to condescendingly state that Woodstock was “a really big concert.” And if they say they know Walter Cronkite from the footage of him announcing JFK’s death, that means you don’t have to tell them that the assassination was “like 9/11.” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2009, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/117 "2009-07-19T11:22:08Z")
> [@Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](#): > > Lucky. My stepmother used to do this, but saying, “Yes,” wouldn’t stop her. > > … “I ran into Camino yesterday, you know Camino” “yes Mom” “Rita’s sister, her children now manage the gas station” “I only know one Camino, Mom, get to it” “and they’re doing very well and” "because the daughter, Maica, who by the way is the same age as Luis Ángel, but she didn’t go to the nuns like us but she did come to the Jesuits, used to be a Public Relations and has such good taste and the son, Alfonso, who is one year older, so between Luis Ángel and me, he’s a " “oh, I’ve told you this before?” “well, you still haven’t told me whatever it is that happened with Camino yesterday, but considering that Rita and Pepe were guests at my baptism, you may want to skip the first twenty chapters or so. That is, if you want me to be able to get the cooking done.” ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2009, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/118 "2009-07-19T12:04:28Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > Also, with many butchering the names of well-known businesses and institutions that were founded in the past two decades; “Let’s get something to eat at that Olive Branch, and then stop at that Barney Noble’s Bookstore.” You should get a [Mom Translator](http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/mom-translator/1099549/). > [@elmwood](#): > > Originally Posted by LouisB > Youth is wasted on the young. > > That’s such a shame. That’s a hoot. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/119 "2009-07-20T23:24:03Z")
I think it was my first full-time professional desk job, and it was around 1985. I happened to mention to my dad that I took late lunches, and I remember him worrying at some point that “my manager’s manager might come by and see my empty desk, and then ask, ‘Where’s this man?’” He must have thought I had Bob Cratchett’s job or something. ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2009, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063/120 "2009-07-20T23:31:04Z")
> [@Caricci](#): > > My grandmother told a televised Ronald Regan “Ahhh! Go scratch your ass!” once, during the convention where he was vying against Gerald Ford for the nomination. Four years later she loved RR and denied ever doing this. My “pseudo-grandpa” (nice old man who lived next door when I was growing up) said he wouldn’t cross the street to see Ronald Reagan. He died in 1991 and I still miss him. I’d have loved to hear his take on recent political events. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-old-people/503063.md?page=7)