Being Gen-X and realizing your Cranky.
Today Bud and I were talking about how being “old” hasn’t really turned out how we thought it would. Oh we both expected the aches and pains. The looking for your glasses that are on your head moments. The walking into a room and not remembering why times. I wasn’t even surprised when I stopped remembering people’s names. Having worked in sales my whole life, remembering names was important, now I’m lucky if you look vaguely familiar to me! We laugh over the grunting as you struggle to get in and out of the car. The shoe horn that has now appeared in the mudroom to assist you in getting your shoes on. Even the afternoon naps that seem so important. All of these things we expected, what we didn’t expect was being cranky!
In the car this afternoon we were discussing last night’s dinner out at a nice local restaurant. Bud started it by commenting on all of the young wait staff we’d seen. I agreed I had noticed that every staff member in there was obviously younger then my own children. He asked if I had noticed the one with the half shaved head haircut. This led me to remind him of the young store clerk the day before who’s hair had looked like they had literally just crawled out of bed before arriving at work. From there we moved on to other younger people we had interacted with recently and how they do things that are so “crazy”. Before I knew it, there we were driving down the road in full blown cranky old couple mode! Each of us complaining about younger people, trying to out do each other with the wildest stories. “Can you believe they did this?” Seeing as neither one of us are prone to be ill tempered, after a moment it made me pause and I said “We sound like two cranky old people! Do you think being frustrated with younger people is just part of the aging experience?”
This turned our conversation to the “old” people we knew when we were the younger people. Was it possible that we ourselves had caused those old people to be cranky? Bud said “I remember my uncle wore Dickies, you know the pants, every single day. My uncle often said he didn’t understand why I didn’t wear them too. I preferred to wear jeans.” I thought about that comment for a while. Now that I’m “old” I tried to see things from Bud’s uncle’s point of view. It probably went something like this. “Crazy young kid! Doesn’t even know a good pair of pants when he sees one!”
That reminded me of my grandmother, when it rained she would always pull a little plastic bonnet out of her purse and put it over her head, tying it under her chin. I would have rather died a thousand deaths then be seen wearing a piece of plastic over my head. I remember her getting frustrated with me one day, telling me that I was going to “catch the death of cold” because I was out in a light drizzle with my head uncovered. Pretty sure that drove her to crankiness. As Bud and I drove along we remembered countless other times when our younger selves did things and then heard the older people in our lives say in frustration “Well that’s just not the way it is done.”
My grandmother lived to be 102 years old. I think back now to how often I heard her say “the world is so different now.” She was never cranky, at least not outwardly to any of us. She was frustrated by it, but never cranky. I remember one day we were talking about how incredible it was that she had lived so long. She said to me “I’m not sure I really like it to be honest.” I asked her why and she said “There is no one around me that remembers the world the way I remember it. I feel so alone sometimes.”
I can understand more what she means now. Young people today don’t remember when we had to dress up to go to work or simply brush our hair before we stepped out to run a cash register. My world required that, theirs does not. And so for the next 20 - 30 years or so I will adjust to live in their world without being cranky. Can’t say I won’t get frustrated, but I’ll try not to be cranky. My consolation will be that just as I exit out to my next adventure, those younger people will be the new “old people” and they will have to face a world that seems strange and awkward to them. I hope they won’t get cranky either!