America: No Country for Oldsters

Growing old in America 2.0

Note: This is another in a continuing series of previously published articles. Please subscribe to my primary Substack, “I Protest,” here: https://donaldjeffries.substack.com/

“Old age is hell,” my mother used to frequently say. She was forty six when I was born, so she was pretty much always old in my eyes. My father didn’t have to tell me; I simply looked at how ravaged his body had become, largely because of his inexplicable trust in the medical profession, which wasn’t quite as bad as it is now.

All my aunts and uncles were similarly aged; being born late in life makes you something of a generational anomaly. My nieces and nephews were always more like siblings, because they were closer to my age. Older relatives would pat my head and say, “Don’t grow old.” Well, now I am old. Sixty six may be like forty six was back then, but that number is what it is. I don’t feel sixty six; in fact, I really don’t feel any different than I was at fourteen. I think I can still do everything, but that number….

I stopped fighting getting the senior citizen discount. I didn’t want to admit I was a senior citizen, and didn’t think my ego could handle it if someone didn’t “card me” to make me prove my age. Well, as it turns out, they don’t seem to check on anyone’s age who gets a senior citizen discount. I always took great pride in people thinking I was much younger than I really was. That used to be something I regularly heard; “You can’t be forty!” or “You can’t be fifty!” I don’t hear it much any more, and that’s kind of depressing. Almost as depressing as being only four years away from seventy.

I used to play pickup basketball with my son and his friends almost every day. But that ended at least fifteen years ago, when I was barely fifty. That number didn’t bother me as much. I wonder if I could play pickup basketball at sixty six. I feel like I can, but I think it would get inside my head- what if you drop dead while playing? What if you injure your knees, and can’t keep up that daily 20,000 plus steps on your Fitbit? Maybe I could throw a baseball of football around without that kind of fear.

I just filed to collect Social Security. The online process wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but I’m still expecting some glitches. Social Security is only a good deal if you live long enough to collect more than what they took from you during your working career. So many people I’ve known, like my brother-in-law, who died at fifty eight, were big losers in the Social Security game. Like too many others, he had no wife and children, so no one collected on the money he paid into the system for more than forty years. I guess it’s less gruesome than life insurance, where the only way you can “win” is to die as early as possible.

I’ll be making more from Social Security than I do from all my books combined. That ought to tell you something about how well paid most writers are now. There are a lot more people than there were sixty years ago, but there are a whole lot fewer readers. And even a smaller percentage of readers read the kind of books I write. Many of the best-selling authors are women who write “chick lit.” And lots of readers love the niche fiction; sci-fi, vampires, zombies, etc.

I know it will feel surrealistic to get my first Social Security check. Well, actually, I won’t see it, as it will be deposited directly into my bank account. Until they institute the digitalized currency, that is. Then I will be lucky to ever get access to my money, because everything I write, here and elsewhere, will further lower my social credit score. I don’t feel like a Social Security recipient. I don’t feel like a senior citizen. But that’s what the calendar tells me I am.

The elderly (and boy, I hate that word way more than senior citizen) in America have a raw deal. Unlike in the Asian world, or the Middle East, or Africa, they aren’t revered as valuable “elders.” In fact, the only time in recent history where I heard that word used was when Kentucky teenager Nicholas Sandmann had the audacity to stare at a Native American “elder” who was trying to provoke him. Nonwhite “elders” do get respect, it seems. Maybe even here, in America 2.0. But for White oldsters, it’s the Medical Industrial Complex, and a retirement home, if you’re lucky. If you’re not, you’ll be subject to the “care” of an odious nursing home.

I’m hopeful that my children would care for me if I needed it. But I know the reality that many, if not most, adult children largely abandon their parents to some kind of “home” once they can no longer take care of themselves. It’s a rare soul like my friend Bob Wilson, who took care of both his parents until they died. Most have bought into the persistent cultural messages that parents are merely an annoyance once you’ve left the nest. Well, maybe the healthy ones make adequate babysitters for grandchildren.

There really are a lot of old people in “homes” of various kinds, with no one to visit them. Ever. It’s probably the most glaring aspect of American family dysfunction. And the COVID narrative made it official; now even those children and grandchildren who wanted to visit their older loved ones couldn’t. By mandate. Which in dumbed-down America 2.0, is as good as a law. Who knows how many oldsters died of loneliness, died of broken hearts, alone in one of those forlorn places? With their masks on.

Clint Eastwood’s film Gran Torino illustrated this problem very cogently. Old Clint, with his wife gone, has been largely abandoned by his family, whose primary interest seems to be in how soon they can inherit his estate. The Asian family next door, meanwhile, holds a different set of traditional values, where age is respected. It is inarguably the Western world- i.e., the Whites- who have adopted this insensitive attitude towards even their closest elderly family members. I don’t think anyone else really has. Within the White race, only the Italians, the Spanish, and the Greeks still seem to value the elderly. The nonwhite world almost all does.

If you want to know what I think of the other valuable benefit American oldsters receive from the government, check out this earlier piece I wrote about the Medicare scam. A Medical Monstrosity on Life Support And I criticized the Social Security system in general in this article from my old blog. The Impossible Math of Social Security My wife is still working, and I am covered under her health insurance plan, so I don’t have to get Medicare for a few years. I’m sure it will be complicated.

If any issues arise with my Social Security payments, I know full well just how easy they will be to resolve. As my brother’s Representative Payee for many years, when he was receiving Social Security disability payments, they would invariably lose the form I sent in, and we’d have to go the local Social Security office to resolve it. If you think the DMV is bad, just wait in line at a Social Security office. Talk about fast and friendly customer service! You will get the full America 2.0 experience.

We all say it, but life is fleeting. No, it’s almost “warp speed,” like Trump’s vaccine. I think back to my early years as a blue-collar worker, in the mid-1970s. And realize all the oldsters I enjoyed talking with then, the World War II veterans and even older ones, are all gone. Long gone. If they were in their 50s and 60s then, just do the math. And that’s frightening. At least to me. My son is now the same age I was when he was born. When I dream of my children, they are almost all little, back in what I consider my salad days. Golden times.

I know that old age beats the alternative. As Teddy Kennedy said of JFK, Jr., he never had the privilege of combing gray hair. If only Teddy had questioned the highly suspicious circumstances of his nephew’s death. But the point he made is a poignant one. Now I haven’t had the privilege of combing gray hair yet, either. Many people think I dye my hair. You can choose to believe me or not, but I have never used any hair dye in my life. Now, if I do go gray, like the other oldsters, I probably will try to hide it. I’m embarrassingly vain sometimes.

I’m been very fortunate. I don’t have arthritis, or any kind of pain at all. I eat whatever I want. I attribute my health to lots of vitamins and supplements, and to staying away from doctors. I saw the sausage being made while working for the Medical Industrial Complex for forty four years. Take my advice, and stay away from them. I have never slept well, so I get along with four to five hours of sleep a night. And my sinuses are always troubling me. But those are pretty small complaints compared to what most oldsters have to contend with.

I often reflect on time. I wonder what would happen to the aging process, if no trappings of time were around to document it. No calendars, or clocks. Do we perhaps age because we’re programmed to, by time itself? We all look in the mirror and see basically the same person everyday. It’s only when others haven’t seen you in a while, that they notice the aging process at work, with the wrinkles and the sagging. While I don’t hear “you can’t be that old” much any more, there are encouraging signs.

About a year ago, a woman who used to wait on me every day, when I got my Slurpee from 7-11 before work, saw me in Panera and said, “Hey, it’s Mr. Slurpee!” Yeah, I didn’t always have such a healthy diet. Slurpees were once a guilty pleasure. At any rate, I hadn’t been in that 7-11 for at least fifteen years. So it made me feel good. People who I haven’t seen in quite a while do seem to recognize me, so maybe I’m holding up okay. But it still doesn’t stop the haunting truth that that much time has gone by.

In that same Panera, there is a woman nearly my age who walks to work every day. She can’t afford a car, like a shocking number of other blue-collar workers in the wealthiest country in the world. She has issues I don’t have- walks with a limp- and my heart goes out to her. There are far too many more like her among the working oldsters. I see the snowbirds behind the counters at grocery stores and retail outlets. It’s a real indictment of our rigged economy that people in their sixties are still forced to work. And more significantly, working jobs that pay them a pittance.

Unlike dogs or cats, for instance, old people in America have a pretty raw deal. It’s bad enough to feel your body (and too often your mind) slowly but surely erode. To shake your head and say, “Well, there’s something else I can’t do any more.” To watch your children often turn out to be ungrateful and ultimately uninterested in your welfare. To retire from the workforce without any fuss or folderol. No grand farewell party. No gold watch. But just watch how most people treat their dogs and cats. They seem to show them more love and empathy than they do for their own parents.

Do other oldsters see still see themselves as young and vital? We don’t have to be Satanists who absorb adrenochrome from terrified children, to appreciate the luster of youth. It’s the ultimate aphrodisiac, they tell us. As we age, we all become invigorated around younger people. Which makes the neglect of so many adult children and grandchildren all the more unconscionable. I don’t know what the death rates are for oldsters who live with their children, but I would have to think they probably live longer and better lives than their peers who’ve been shuffled off to nursing homes.

Three of my grandparents died many years before I was born. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to bond with them. I like to think I would have been pleased to brighten their lives to whatever extent I could. My grandmother died when I was twelve. She didn’t live close by, and was kind of a frightening woman. She is definitely the one who kindled my interest in the bizarre and unexplained. But I would have been thrilled to know her as adult. To ask her all about her youth, and what the 1890s and early 1900s were really like.

Being as interested as I am in history, obviously my own family heritage is especially important to me. I’ve done lots of genealogical research, and even wrote a private book about our family for all my relatives. We’re a lot more connected to the distant past than we think. The last known widow of a Civil War veteran died on December 16, 2020. And the grandson of President John Tyler, who took office in 1841, is still alive. I’m trying to get him on my show. The past is prologue. We learn not only from the hidden history I write about, but from our own ancestral history.

My mother filled my head with colorful stories from her childhood. Because of her, the 1920s still roar in my imagination. I’d listen raptly to any elderly relative that told me of the Olden Days. Now that I’m old, no younger relative seems much interested in my Olden Days. I don’t feel as comfortable, or as natural, in playing the part of the oldster. I’d rather be the one questioning them, and caring for them. I’m amazed when I hear from young people- one of them is only fourteen- who love my books about history, because most people, young and old, have forgotten their history.

As a young music enthusiast, and in fact budding songwriter myself, my favorite music genre was “oldies.” But “oldies” then meant the 1960s. Now, an “oldies” station I guess could play hits from the 2000s, and they would qualify. “Old” movies to my kids are from the 1990s, not the pre-code early talkies I still love to watch. Time is relative. “Old” is a relative term. I am not going gently into that good night of senior citizenship, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas. I want to be forever young.

I will happily take my money back from Social Security, but I’m never going to think of myself as an oldster. There’s a very wise saying that goes, “Never let an old person into your body.” I try to remember that. Think young and be young, or something like that. Many of the friends I’ve made online are pretty young. Most of them are certainly younger than me. I enjoy communicating with young people much more than my fellow oldsters. No trading complaints, or discussing office visits. I do complain about inflation, and the general state of America 2.0, of course, but I will never shake my fist and demand that children get off of my lawn.

Growing older is a victory of sorts, I guess. We survivors remember all our friends, family, and co-workers, who never saw sixty, or fifty, or forty. Who didn’t live long enough to mourn for many others. Whose Social Security went into a huge black hole, like the secret intelligence agency budgets. We lift our glasses to them, as we collect our own Social Security checks. “Youth is wasted on the young,” they say. Old age isn’t the worst thing. Just don’t call me elderly. And please tell me I look younger.