I Want a Little Credit

This has to be the Rodney Dangerfield of ages. Maybe it's because I don't look quite as old as I am, or that things have really changed since my mother tried to teach me to treat "old people" with respect. Maybe that was because when you were this age then, you really were old.

Getting out of bed in the morning is when I feel oldest. It seems to take a bit for things to start operating right. Makes it tough that we have decided that the AM before she goes to work is the best time to work out. Thank heaven for elliptical machines.

I think my cohort and the one just following (the "real" baby boomers) may have shifted the paradign by making something of a fetish about youth. The "Pepsi generation" and all that. We buy a lot of plastic surgery, and all those pill ads on the Nightly News are aimed straight at us. Pee too often, there's betuwhazzis with a list of side effects as long as "Moby Dick." Trouble with medical marketing's TLA (three letter acronym); just take curzital but not if you have any one of fourteen conditions common among those forty or older.

So the respected wise elder role seems to be out. But I'm still beginning to have spare parts put into the machine, yet it seems to be up to me to go visit my grandchildren.

And out in the world, if we still want to engage in commerce, we have to "keep up with the technology." Or at least look like we are. Okay so I blog. [I actually have two, this one and one for commerce, and never the twain shall meet.] I have a facebook account, and, as one friend says, I can't quite figure out whether it really has a function. It does keep me more in touch with my kids and their kids, and has led to a couple of valued connections with people from my past. I also have a twitter account, and that one's even a little stranger to me. LinkedIn I use. But with all of this am I just trying to prove something?

A much younger friend, maybe my son's age, said to me, meaning it as a sort of compliment, "Since you got an iPhone I think you're cool." Jeez, thanks friendo.

I hate to tell all you younguns, but I bought my first computer in 1980. I was accessing a small mainframe by teletype and papertape in 1969, I was emailing and conferencing worldwide in the mid eighties, and blew up my first phone bill in the nineties with my Compuserve account. I have a smart phone. I just don't have to have it plugged into my cerebellum every waking moment. Sometimes I miss payphones, among other things, like a well written letter, or a real book.

No respect. It really is the Rodney Dangerfield of ages, especially now.