Old People Need To Be Stuck In A Home
Published July 06, 2004
Ok, I officially hate old people. If you're getting offended by my rant already, chances are that you are old. But, most likely, there are no old people reading this, because old people usually forget to take their brain medicine and usually can't find the on button to their computer, let alone know what a computer is.
As you can tell, I'm super pissed. Why am I pissed? Brilliant question and I'm glad you asked. I was getting ready to take the bus today because I needed to go somewhere, hence having the need to take the bus. There was something wrong with the bus and we had failed to leave the terminus after the time it was supposed to leave. The bus driver was on a pay phone outside of the bus and on the phone for quite a bit. No big deal to me, considering that the bus I was taking comes by every 15 minutes and I was in no real rush. Just another lazy day in Ste. Anne's. Boy howdy, was I wrong.
About ten minutes of waiting in the bus got to someone and he just snaps. He starts yelling and screaming and swearing about the how the bus isn't going anywhere and how he's paid money for his pass so that the busses should be running efficiently and blah, blah, blah. Ok, that's not the important part. The important thing to remember is that the guy is mentally challenged. His father (I'm assuming that it was his father) was there trying to calm him down; telling him that everything is going to be okay and that there will be another bus shortly. This is where the fun starts.
Despite the father's best efforts to calm down his mentally challenged son's yelling, some of the other passengers starting yelling at the guy, telling him to shut up and "go to hell". The passengers yelling at him weren't dumb teenagers not knowing better but senior citizens who should know better. I can't believe an old lady told the mentally challenged man to go to hell. With the old people throwing fuel into the fire, the guy went ballistic. At one point, he got up from his seat and I thought he was going to hit the woman (he prolly was) but was restrained by his father and a guy sitting next to me got up to prevent any violence from happening. The old people continued to trade verbal shots with the mentally challenged guy even as we were all getting off the broken bus and getting on a new bus.
Now, even though the guy was swearing his lungs out and the worse the old people were doing was telling the guy to go to hell, I almost wanted the guy to start smacking the old people around. He wasn't making and jokes about Depends or Metamucil. It's obvious that he's not all there and when his dad is pleading with the old people to stop pushing him because "he's not right", so just lay off. It makes me so angry sometimes that when people are such arrogant assholes who have no tolerance for people with special needs. I almost wanted to smack those old people around myself.
- Old People Need To Be Stuck In A Home
- Published: July 06, 2004
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- Section: Culture
- Writer: James Gore
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Let's put it this way; I'm pretty intolerant towards those who make intolerance a hobby. I have no sympathy for those people.
I understand perfectly. Most intolerant people rationalize their behaviour.
Believe it or not I know of many so-called old people that are quite tolerant. In fact as one grows older most learn to temper their (re)actions. It's called wisdom and patience.
It will be shorter than you realize before you find yourself one of the elderly.
Food for thought.
Oh, I agree completely that there are plenty of great elderly people out there. Years ago, I did some volunteer work with the elderly and some of them are the nicest people I've ever met. I apologize with grouping them into the mix and it was wrong of me. I do enjoy spending time with the elderly. Some of my greatest conversations and revelations have come from an elderly person.
However, I stand firm in my belief that there are many old cranks that are simply angry at the world. If they hate everything and anything that they don't understand, maybe they should be stuck in a home.
Also keep in mind that I had wrote this only a couple of hours after the incident, so I was still miffed. In retrospect though, I still would have liked to have seen the mentally challenged gentlemen deck one of the old women. They were downright rude.
Couple of things:
1) Be careful who you hate; Pete Townsend once wrote, "I hope I die before I get old," and he's hanging onto his 60 some-odd year old ass with every ounce of (low, aging) energy, fighting the cloaked man with the scythe like a teenager on crack.
2) Most old people I meet are the last of a soon-to-be extinct generation that actually had manners. Most impatient, rude, hot-headed pricks I meet are between 16 and 35. Your mileage may vary.
3) It's ironic that a half-assed, semi-literate 'essay' filled with typos and unstripped HREF symbols has as it's premise the mocking of 'old people' and the mentally challenged.
I'm assuming you are smart enough to detect this irony, but I could be wrong.
Yeah, I noticed the questions marks too after I posted. I really should fix it.
However, I don't think that's fair. I didn't insult the mentally challenge. In the essay, I'm defending him. I'm saying that the elderly people who were insulting him were very wrong. As well, I acknowledged in a previous comment that I prolly shouldn't have grouped all elderly people into my example, but I am not going to edit my article.
To all who have posted, I get all your points; so don't think I'm ignoring what you're saying. I just hope you at least take a second to understand what I'm trying to say.
And for the last time, not all elderly people are rude, crass, and evil. As well, I wrote something last week about how annoying teenagers are. As far as I'm concerned, I'd take an intolerant senior citizen over an ignorant intolerant teenager anyday.
As far as I'm concerned, I'd take an intolerant senior citizen over an ignorant intolerant teenager anyday.
I used to wait table in college and can personally attest that both of the above mentioned demographics are horrible tippers. Just horrible.
I say throw them both into homes and throw away the God-damned key.....
We're going to throw people in homes because they are horrble tippers? We'll need more homes.
Okay, I'll cut'em some slack on tipping. But, having been harrassed by an elderly participant who has followed me from thread to thread hounding me since the very first day he found Blogcritics, committing some old people to 'homes' is starting to look good to me. Yup, they have rights, but so do the rest of us. And, I believe the old often trade on their age to get away with abominable behavior, as James described above and has been demonstrated here.
Then, there is the bigotry issue. I've had to sue people three times on my own behalf. Two of the three, and half of the third, were elderly white people who to this day probably see nothing wrong with their discriminatory actions.
The image of the old as Grandpa on The Waltons or whatever, is often in contrast to their actual behavior. My grandmother used to say, 'There's no fool worse than an old fool because he has had time to learn better.' I suspect she was on to something.
Hey, didn't you hear that song by Pulp about Help The Aged? One day they were jsut like you, man, sex and drugs and sniffin glue. Cut em some slack, is what.
old people shuld only be allowed out on a sunday
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Sounds like a case of intolerance all around... including yourself ;-)