Wisdom of the Aged

You know you're getting older when the funniest thing about falling down is watching it happen to someone else. I've always heard that we're only as old as we feel. If that is the case, then most days I'm a fossil.

According to recent reports, our generation of seniors is getting younger. As stated by the experts, "the new forty is now age fifty-five". I wish I had come across this information a few years ago. If I had, I would still be in my thirties.

I decided to do my own research on the cause and effect of ageing. I began by conducting a public opinion poll on growing older. Actually I asked a few people on the street if they were old people. The first one hit me with her purse, another one asked if I had a dollar I could spare, and two people said "yes, we're old geezers, what's it to you!" The majority of the folks I questioned told me to mind my own business. In light of the results from this back-breaking research, I came to the conclusion that old people are mean. (Now, before you get mad and start throwing things at me, remember that sticks and stones will break my bones...)

The results are all in, and I have concluded that the number one cause of ageing is time. I don't have anything against time. Time is important. In fact I wish I had more of it. However, the fact remains that while time heals all wounds, it eventually kills us.

Time is said to be the best teacher as well, although none of its students ever live to graduate. I've learned a few things over the years. Important things like, if you give a man a deer steak you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to hunt deer for himself, he will not do a lick of work from September through February, and when four cars reach an intersection at the same time, the driver pointing the gun goes first.

After these two startling revelations, I began to ask more questions, hoping to gain that additional wisdom and knowledge which is supposed to come with age. Perhaps you too have pondered on some of the following questions, the most intriguing one being, " Where do people go on vacation if they work all year at a vacation resort? Do they go to an industrial park?" Or perhaps you've wondered why we ignore our doctor's advice, yet we plan our weekends around the weather reports from Meteorologists.

Another question begs to be answered. Did Al Gore really invent the Internet? Is that where the word, algorithm, came from...?

Ignorance is not a virtue and the only thing that improves with age is hindsight. Politics are like the weather, everybody talks about it but nobody does anything. If you want to see a cheerful giver, ask someone for their opinion. And if you look closely, those who give advice so freely usually have the IQ of a door knob.

Wouldn't it be nice if we were born with all the knowledge and wisdom of someone who has lived to be 100 years old. By the time we got around to the really big mistakes, we'd be too old to make them.

We never get too old to learn something new. In fact, I learned a new lesson just this morning. My dog knocked me down. I landed flat of my back on the hardwood floor. I immediately wrote down the following discovery in my list of things I've learned...

The older you get the harder you fall.