The thought of getting old - turning into an old man - has never really held much appeal to me. The only saving grace to the entire prospect was that I could reach that "don't mind his outrageous statements. H e's old: he grew up in a different time and just doesn't know any better" point in life. Problem is, it occurred to me, today, that part of the reason people say that now is that the whole "PC"/self-censoring thing didn't exist in the first half of the 20th century. During my "peak" years, that shit is/was an everyday reality.
Will people 40+ years my junior still be saying things like that to excuse my outrageous statements? Will it be excusable to stand out on my front lawn in a tatty robe and slippers, yelling at those damned kids to get off my lawn?
The genesis of this whole train of thought was something I saw on my drive home from work. I was at a different office, today. This one's in DC. I haven't worked there in months. At any rate, the Waze-directed route home took me down I295 past National Harbor. As I was crossing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge back into Northern Virginia, I passed one of National Harbor's shuttle vans. Now, if you're not from the DC area or have never had cause to know about National Harbor, you'd need to know that the full name of one of the facilities there - the one to which this van belonged - is "Gaylord National Harbor".
Now, when I was a kid, it was a pre-PC time. Whereas kids today might refer to things as "gay", something you might have heard when I was a kid - if you did something stupid - was something like "way to go, gaylord". Naturally seeing that van, I was transported back in time and my inner 12 year old laughed - and my adult side laughed at the absurdity of the humor my inner 12 year old found in such a mindless epithet. And then I grew sad that I might never reach an age where I can simply revel in stupidity.
