I am That Old Woman
And I’m betting you’ve already decided not to read this.
There’s a story going viral about an old woman who took down a cashier because the cashier told her using plastic bags was a no-no in this new environmentally-aware society. The old woman spent 10 minutes holding up the line, first annoying, then enchanting the crowd as she talked about recyclable glass bottles, paper bags, cloth diapers, push mowers, vehicles that didn’t guzzle gas, gadgets that didn’t need walls full of plugs, accessories that didn’t need satellites to make them operable — stuff like that.
The story may or may not be apocryphal, but it’s everywhere. In some versions the old woman is described as “elderly”, as if to make sure we understand just how how awesome this story is. She had lived in an era that no longer exists, that most don’t remember, and, man, wasn’t she wonderful? Who knew? Yay!
I’ve always hated that word “elderly” and now that it appears to apply to me I hate it even more. It’s a sniffy, insulting descriptor having nothing to do with the honorific, “elder”.
If you call me elderly it tells me you’ve put me in a box that separates me, that diminishes me, that labels me as a freakish anachronism only good for studying — as if, at 82 years old, I’m an anthropological wonder, a fragile specimen threatening to go…
