What's with old people

[panache45]

@C.Montgomery_Burns

My dad wears his pants pulled up high, but they’re not cut to wear that high, so he walks around with a permanent wedgie. When I ask him why, he says “That’s where you’re supposed to wear your pants at!”. Uh, no. They’re meant to be worn at the hips. If you want to wear pants that high, get pants cut for that height!

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.

I am 4 years older than your dad, and he sounds more like someone in my own dad’s generation.

[panache45]

@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 mom, who lived to be 92, used to yell “Oh, shut up!” whenever George Bush was talking on TV. She also loathed his mother, ever since Barbara Bush dared to criticize Eleanor Roosevelt.

And she had no problem with Clinton getting oral sex from under his desk.

[Bambi_Hassenpfeffer]

I’m glad my mother hasn’t turned out like this. She follows me on Twitter and we’re friends on Facebook and she took well to the texting lessons my brother gave her a year or so ago. It’s odd to put a status on my Facebook and have my mom’s name show up underneath it.

She’s 63, works two jobs, and we’re certain she’ll outlive all of us.

[monavis]

I wonder (if you are lucky enough to get older) what your children or grandchildren will ask about what’s up with you? Maybe the time will come when you will need to know how to live without if all the modern things we take for granted now should cease to be because of lack of electric supply etc. One never knows what the future holds.

[drastic_quench]

@monavis

I wonder (if you are lucky enough to get older) what your children or grandchildren will ask about what’s up with you? Maybe the time will come when you will need to know how to live without if all the modern things we take for granted now should cease to be because of lack of electric supply etc. One never knows what the future holds.

It is not as if holding a working knowledge of modern technology requires forgetting simpler ones. Though I did think it odd that I was able to trade my butter churn for an iPhone…

[Frylock]

@monavis

I wonder (if you are lucky enough to get older) what your children or grandchildren will ask about what’s up with you? Maybe the time will come when you will need to know how to live without if all the modern things we take for granted now should cease to be because of lack of electric supply etc. One never knows what the future holds.

If all the modern things we take for granted now should cease to be because of lack of electric supply, then I and all my descendants will almost certainly die in very short order.

Worrying about that would be apocalyptic thinking, and it’s practically useless.

-FrL-

[Sunspace]

@elmwood

That’s such a shame.

南北西東！ I mean, what the heck happened to The Onion?

[buttonjockey308]

@DianaG

I don’t think it is. The young haven’t learned yet, the old refuse to *keep *learning. For “old” here, read “calcified”.

The reason no age is given as a cutoff for “old” is that there isn’t one. Some people never get old, and some truly determined people achieve calcification well before middle age.

The years pass at the same rate for everyone, that’s not what makes you old. What makes you old is allowing your world to shrink to the point where new knowledge and ideas and experiences become unwelcome threats to your little fiefdom of complacent “wisdom”.

Ditto.

[chappachula]

For “old” here, read “calcified”…What makes you old is allowing your world to shrink to the point where new knowledge becomes unwelcome

but sometimes you young’uns also have to face the simple truth:

No, I’m not old. Your music really does suck.

[salinqmind]

@panache45

My mom, who lived to be 92, used to yell “Oh, shut up!” whenever George Bush was talking on TV. She also loathed his mother, ever since Barbara Bush dared to criticize Eleanor Roosevelt.

And she had no problem with Clinton getting oral sex from under his desk.

:eek::eek::eek: Mine, too!

If it weren’t for the fact my mom is alive, I would say we had the same parent!

[overlyverbose]

Does anyone remember the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding? He used Windex as a fix-all. When the main character got a zit on the day of her wedding, he said, “Put some Windex.” This was my grandfather, only his version of Windex was Listerine. He used to wash his hair in it to get rid of psoriasis. He’d also rinse his mouth with it and use it to clean things. (And no, he didn’t use the same shot of listerine to clean, rinse and wash his hair in - the man practically had stock in the company he used so much.) I only found out about this after he’d passed away, and it explained a lot about why he always smelled so minty fresh.

The post upthread about the healing and cleaning properties of vinegar reminded me of it.

[monavis]

@drastic_quench

It is not as if holding a working knowledge of modern technology requires forgetting simpler ones. Though I did think it odd that I was able to trade my butter churn for an iPhone…

It isn’t a matter of forgetting simpler times, but of never having to do with less. To know how to cook with so many logs in a wood stove fire, when to add another etc. Hand pump water,heat water for bathing,or bathe in a creek, no radio, etc…
I know I do not like it if the electric is out for just a few minuets, and I love the modern appliances that I wish I had when my children were growing up. Now life is so much simpler. Not to have entertainment on hand at all times of day and night. Of course there wasn’t much time for entertainment then.

[C.Montgomery_Burns]

@panache45

I am 4 years older than your dad, and he sounds more like someone in my own dad’s generation.

I know. His greatest goal in life is to be 90 years old.

[purplehorseshoe]

@C.Montgomery_Burns

I know. His greatest goal in life is to be 90 years old.

Excellent username/post combo from Springfield’s oldest citizen.

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

I got my iPod in the fall of 2007, and it hasn’t worked properly for the last six months. I finally got a new one because the old one was so undependable. My grandfather’s crystal radio still works. Which piece of technology is obsolete, in your view? The dead iPod or the working radio?

My Father in Law has a saying for any modern architecture that is a monument to the ego of the architect. “That must have looked great on the computer.”

When I get a text message from someone who can’t be bothered to write all the letters in a three word question, I think of an Irish monk writing the complete works of Aristotle using a quill pen and a bottle of ink he had to make for himself, and I think how far we’ve come.

Then there was the day when I told my Dad not to throw the empty tuna can in the garbage - it has to be recycled. Then I had to explain to him how the early '70s coffin ‘Home Entertainment System’ that he had been so proud of was worth nothing today, and in fact, the guy who lived across the street who did woodworking didn’t even want it, so it was going to the dump. He had a twinkle in his eye when he pointed out the hypocrisy of modern society. He was right - that’s pretty stupid.

Anyone who has lived through the Great Depression and World War II has the right to question what the modern generation thinks of as progress, in my book.

[Frylock]

@Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela

I got my iPod in the fall of 2007, and it hasn’t worked properly for the last six months. I finally got a new one because the old one was so undependable. My grandfather’s crystal radio still works. Which piece of technology is obsolete, in your view? The dead iPod or the working radio?

“Obsolete,” when applied to pieces of technology, means “designed according to a technology for which there is a newer technology that does the same thing but does so more effectively.” Use of the term usually also implies that the older technology can no longer be used to design useful devices. This second implication doesn’t apply in this case, but on the main definition I just gave, the crystal radio is obsolete, and the ipod is not. A machine’s being broken has nothing to do with whether it is an obsolete piece of technology or not.

My Father in Law has a saying for any modern architecture that is a monument to the ego of the architect. “That must have looked great on the computer.”

And you and your father know this building is a “monument to the ego of the architect” how? You suppose the architect built the thing himself, without pay? You don’t think there were large numbers of people involved in the decision to have the building built? You think everyone involved was trying to stoke the architect’s ego? You don’t think that huge amounts of money were involved, such that any suggestion that we should stoke an architect’s ego wouldn’t be laughed out of committee?

When I get a text message from someone who can’t be bothered to write all the letters in a three word question, I think of an Irish monk writing the complete works of Aristotle using a quill pen and a bottle of ink he had to make for himself, and I think how far we’ve come.

Do you think there is value in doing things in a way that is more difficult than necessary?

Then there was the day when I told my Dad not to throw the empty tuna can in the garbage - it has to be recycled. Then I had to explain to him how the early '70s coffin ‘Home Entertainment System’ that he had been so proud of was worth nothing today, and in fact, the guy who lived across the street who did woodworking didn’t even want it, so it was going to the dump. He had a twinkle in his eye when he pointed out the hypocrisy of modern society. He was right - that’s pretty stupid.

I haven’t seen the piece in question, but I’m guessing your dad didn’t try hard enough to “recycle” it. People buy stuff like that.

Anyone who has lived through the Great Depression and World War II has the right to question what the modern generation thinks of as progress, in my book.

You haven’t made a very good case that your book is a good book.

[Lamia]

@overlyverbose

My mom does something somewhat related. She’ll call me, all aghast, to tell me that someone I’ve never heard of died.

The last time my grandmother visited my mother, I heard them having a conversation that went basically like this:

GRANDMA: Do you remember Jimmy Smith?
MOM: Ah, no, I don’t think so.
GRANDMA: Oh, sure you do. He was Johnny Smith’s brother. Their parents owned the feed store.
MOM: Well, I remember the feed store.
GRANDMA: Johnny dated your sister Laura in high school, but they broke up before the prom so she went with Billy Evans instead. Don’t you remember that?
MOM: Yeah…
GRANDMA: Jimmy was his older brother. Jimmy Smith.
MOM: Hmm, I think I do remember him. He had blond hair, right? Kind of tall?
GRANDMA: Right.
MOM: So, what about him?
GRANDMA: Well, he died last month. He had a heart attack.

[C.Montgomery_Burns]

@purplehorseshoe

Excellent username/post combo from Springfield’s oldest citizen.

You mean “Eeeeexcellent!”.

[King_Bobo]

I used to have similar conversations with my Mom before she passed (all via long-distance phone when it was a lot pricier than now).

Mom: You will never guess who I met today!!!

Me: No I cannot guess.

Mom: You know, she used to go to 10 o’clock Mass

Me: Lots of people there Ma, give me a clue.

Mom: Well… she used to wear that funny hat and always had an umbrella.

Me:…Uh, so

Mom: You know, her daughter married that red-haired fellow that was in school with your cousin.

Me: Uh, maybe.

Mom: Yes they used to go to that place, you know the one, where they met the others.

Me: What place?

Mom: That meeting place, for things.

Me: Things?

Mom: Yes, Meeting things, where they talk…

Mom/Me:…( a number of similar exchanges about “meetings” and “things” - no solid information established - maybe 5 minutes or more).

Me: So what about them.

Mom: Oh, it doesn’t matter, you never knew them, you had left long before they came here - any way she died!!!.

Me: (under my breath…20 dollars for an international phone call #@%^$#@!!!)

     Bye Mom, talk to you soon.

[Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela]

@Frylock

You haven’t made a very good case that your book is a good book.

I’m sorry - is the question in the thread title/original post an attempt to gain some understanding about a world outlook that is based on events that happened in someone else’s lifetime, or do you just want to whine about old peoples’ behaviour?