Saturday, January 26, 2019

"Old People Die,"

she said, shrugging her shoulders.

We got back from Puerto Vallarta exactly one week ago.  We've been there at least a dozen times and never get tired of the experience.  The weather is always beautiful (It actually rained one  morning as we were walking out of the gym.  I think that's the first time I've ever been rained on in PV.).  The food is always terrific.  The staff at Villa del Palmar treat us like we're family.  I got lots of reading in and even lost weight while doing it.  I also have an awesome tan.  Well, had an awesome tan would be more accurate.  I'm getting paler by the day.

However, the visit this time had the cloud of the shutdown hanging over it.  I kept worrying about the TSA lady at DIA who couldn't afford to take her sick cat to a vet.  I kept worrying if airports would still be functioning when we were scheduled to return to Denver.  I watched CNN in the morning!  I've never watched the news on vacation.  That's not true.  I watched a little bit of the election returns while in Belize two years ago and look what happened.  And to top it off, Ignacio, the wonderful guy at the breakfast buffet who makes Katherine's eggs every morning, can't get back to his welding job in Charlotte because his visa expired and he can't get a new one.  Katherine and Ignacio exchange hugs when we first show up at the buffet and they hug on our last day.  He doesn't make enough at Villa del Palmar to support his family.  The welding job was key to his survival.  And to make matters worse, asshole Americans on an all-inclusive plan don't tip the poor guy.  They even look askance at Katherine when she gives him 20 pesos every morning.  Stuff like that put a damper on my vacation spirit.

The other cloud that hovered over me was the fact that I was surrounded by old people.  Let's face it.  Villa del Palmar was never a destination spot for spring breakers or well-heeled millennials (is that an oxymoron?).  If you want that you have to go to Nueva Vallarta or downtown on the malicon where young people abound.  It's just that I've never noticed the aging clientele at the place until this year.  The fact that so many of us recognize each other from years past and that I, in fact, am seventy years old, should probably have alerted me to the whole age thing.

There was a stooped shouldered gray haired man (they are all stoop shouldered) who always got to the gym before we did and commandeered the running machine I liked to use.  That was okay.  There were others available, but he used the thing at a snail's pace while reading an aviation magazine.  Like, oh sure, he has an airplane.  I don't know.  It just pissed me off.  And there was the overweight couple a few years younger (!) than me.  The man just sat on the quadriceps machine while his wife lay prone on the hamstring machine.  I mean they just sat there.  Occasionally the man would kick one of his legs up against the pad and I did see the lady attempt to flex her knees.

During breakfast we liked to sit at one of the tables close to the pool area.  There is a little step up to the restaurant proper that one has to negotiate in order to get to the buffet.  Next year I want them to make a sign that disallows old people from eating at those tables.  The number of old folks who could barely scale that step was depressing.  One old guy almost lost his balance going down the step due to the extra weight he was carrying on his newly loaded plate.  I was so happy I knew CPR.

You can bet your life that the same guy who almost didn't make it over the step would  later that day put on a Tommy Bahama shirt, some long khaki shorts, white tennis shoes, all of it complemented by knee high black socks.  He and his wife would then take the bus marked Centro and walk up and down the malicon munching on skewered shrimp and drinking aqua fresca.  The scene down there was always quite festive.

Kathie and I looked at all this differently.  My response was, "Oh God, that's me without the black socks!"  She would say, "Isn't it wonderful how great we look compared to some of those people."  She has always been a glass is half full kind of person, but I've managed to love her in spite of that.

We stayed there for two weeks and as far as I know, no one suffered a heart attack or broke a neck climbing the step up to the buffet.  I think we got on the plane just in time.

But then I got home and immediately felt terrible.  Jet lag.  Not as much fruit.  No fish.  Snow to shovel.  A house to clean.  Cooking to clean up after.  It's hard to face all that when you relate to all the old geezers slumping around the pool in terry cloth lined jackets and yellowing toes.

And then yesterday I had a Facebook confrontation with a (shudder) angry young man.  One of my friends commented that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's feelings about income disparity and the ways to solve it were more in line with the founding fathers' ideas than most of the current old white men sitting in Congress.  I wrote a response saying that, for the most part, I agreed with him, but I wished that she would be more careful about  some of the misstatements she has a tendency to make.

You would think I just told a woman to smile!  My FB friend clicked like on my comment, but others challenged me to list some examples.  Another person told me to pay closer attention.

I commented again, this time listing a few of her statements that, according to Polifact and The Washington Post Fact Checker, were false.  The Fact Checker gave her (insert Gasp) Three Pinnochios.  I also repeated that I was a fan of AOC.  I thought she was a breath of fresh air.  I would have voted for her had I been able, but I just thought she would be even more effective if she was a little more circumspect.

One of the outraged types responded that ALL politicians say things that aren't true.  What I needed to do, he counseled me, was look at the big picture.  Stop nit-picking.  He went on to say that old Democrats like me were destroying the party because by picking on poor AOC we were suborning the evil collusion between deep pocketed lobbyists who had already "filled the pockets" of every member of congress.  He was really pissed and all I said was I really like AOC and wished that she would be more careful.  I guess that is what a millennial calls nit picking.  I told him that I knew as a 70 year old, my opinion was by definition worthless, but I wasn't going to apologize for my age.

I wanted to tell my granddaughter Jaydee that same thing a few months ago when she looked at me and said, "Gramps, you're old!"  I protested that I wasn't all that old, but her sister Willa assured me that I was.  Jaydee looked at me once more and said with confidence, "You're gonna die soon."  Die!  I told her that I was not going to die and asked her what made her think of such a thing.  "Old people die," she said, shrugging her shoulders.

That angry little Facebook type should take umbrage in that.


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