SUPERANNUATED

At 79 I am superannuated. Sounds like a Wells Fargo APR. I walk into a gas station and ask for directions. “Don’t you have a map on your cell?” I don’t answer, why bother to explain that I have a Jitterbug flip phone for seniors with large numerals. I really bought it because it is 5 star enabled which means I can get help immediately. Such is one concern at 79. Sometimes I am asked if I text. No, and this is met with bewilderment. I feel like responding alliteratively with I do matriculate, masturbate and masticate. An eharmony woman challenges me with why did you block me on the site, as if had sent her family to Dachau. You’re too cerebral, one opines on Zoosk. I did delete that I was a MENSA member (I caved). And I am asked if I have blue tooth. No, only one cavity.

You’re much too old for me as if body and age condemn me to geriatric celibacy. Reach 79 and you are dead. Reach 80 and you don’t know if you are dead or not. If I had a sabot I would conk it on Zuckerberg’s head — expertise without values; techniques without humanity. When Zuckerberg plays with his mouse he ejaculates algorithms.

The computer was devised on a latent level to mandate continual change, the human race runs amok, it has since its inception.

I have been criticized for not wearing a watch — but now people use their cell to tell and to give time. A watch is control. I have been subtly chastised for having a substantial  inner-directed value system. [What’s that?] When I pass the breakfast joint, Waffles, I think yes about the general community at large. Passing by  Luther’s Here I Stand luncheonette is not a good joint for the indecisive, but OK for Lutherans.

I abide in Athens, Alabama. It is the land of grits, football, the Lawd, roadkill and the patron saint of Huntsville, Alabama, Wernher von Braun. He is the original sin of America after the Indian genocide and slavery. All societies are essentially corrupt, Krishnamurti opined. There I go again; a value. In the South your buttermilk soused fried chicken at Cracker barrel comes with au jews.

I don’t feel safe here. I have an extra pair of sneakers (tennis shoes?) in my trunk. I may have to flee at night. In the sixties I did stop my car and got out and started running after hearing for the first time, “Hey, Jude.”

My son sweetly wants to “drag” me into the 21st century, However, like dad, he wears no watch and only by necessity answers his phone. My wife and I did a good job; essentially he doesn’t suffer fools and has a finely tuned crap detector, like dad. By 2050 he will have suffered much for his beliefs and for whom he is.

Often the oldest people I meet are the youngest and often culturally illiterate. Citizen Kane is something they grow in the tropics.   And Rosebud is a variety of cannabis.

In my “dotage” I experience little fears. Can I turn the corner without hitting the mail box which I clipped in 2018? I sense a degradation of my driving skills. I husband my energies leaving ceiling high bulbs for a six foot two handyman. Nothing like life savings at this age to pay for such services. I wander the streets looking for someone to shine my shoes (What are shoes?). And when I ask for sneakers I am met with a ?

One server at Cracker Barrel (isn’t there an unintended pun in that name?)  I asked one forlorn morning for two sunny side eggs. The server ( you mean waitress or waiter?)  was so puzzled the lady behind me explained my order to her, but she was close to my age and knew all about eggs. I took a soft-boiled approach toward all this, which is very complicated to order.

When I was a young boy “dope” was used to glue balsa parts to construct a model plane. So, is “coke” a kind of coal or a drug of choice? I am lost. Pepsi, as we all know, is the safer drink to order — if you can get it.

I am exasperated trying to explain what is idiomatic to my experience, which is now superannuated.

On eharmony, zoosk and match.com I experience ageism, often expressed by women in their 60s and 70s. I call then the immortals.They will not die, or if they do, after you croak! One woman said she had an “aura” about her.  In their minds they imagine anyone older is potentially dead; I get this from widows. They live in what I term the tense of future fuck, that is, doing a number on your head before it happens, also endemic to the average neurotic. The bi-polar person has at least two points of view on this; the schizophrenic is split; and the borderline is relentlessly in search of a Southern wall.