Dealing With the Elderly

A long time ago there was a jerk named Hitler, who decided it’d be nice if he could tell everyone in the world how they ought to run their lives and started killing pretty much anybody who thought that wasn’t such a hot idea. Well, he didn’t do much of the killing, actually, but he signed the checks. Hitler’s armies were defeated by the logical, sensible people of the world and there was much rejoicing. When everyone realized that they were no longer in immediate danger of being blown apart by a Panzer, they decided that it was safe to come out of hiding and start humping again. A whole generation of humanity started getting busy, and since the greatest generation liked it raw, they made lots of little kids. We call these kids “boomers” because of the percussive sound they make on the ground when they’re pushed out of airplanes.

Fast forward to the present: these boomers are getting old. This year, in fact, a whole lot of them will turn 60. Congratulations! You’re an anchor tied to the drowning ankles of society! Very soon, this generation of drooling geezers will have to be put in homes, where their butts will be wiped by aides and their carrots will be mashed by naturalized citizens. Unless the retirement age is pushed back significantly, even the world’s most successful economies will start choking on the pensions of the elderly.

What Can We Do to Stop This Wretched Menace?

The most effective way to stave off the effects of population aging seems to be pushing back the retirement age. Already menial jobs are being filled by the graying masses. Fries are being served by unskilled jerks that have 72 years of experience in the field of not speaking English. Car washes are hiring specialists who keep their jobs only because the skin on their forearms has become so wrinkly and loose that it doubles as a natural rag. If you’re below 30, you can look wistfully forward to 70 more years of grinding, torturous labor because grandpa wanted to play “Drop the Big One” in grandma’s big underwear.

When more and more of our nations’ coffers are pillaged by the insurance companies of the frail old bastards among us, other pressing needs will naturally receive less funding. For instance, innovations in oil research and technology will stagnate and the world supply will continue to dwindle. Energy prices will skyrocket and riots will spread across China like scabies are currently spreading across my right thigh. These crises need not be mutually exclusive. This is why I propose burning the elderly for electricity.

It is understandable that some of you may balk at filling our atmosphere with the pungent scent of cooked old people flesh and Ben Gay. For the squeamish, I might suggest that a fine way to balance out the enormous number of old people is to start making a lot more young people. For the sake of capitalism, free markets, and civilization, we need to stop being so picky and start multiplying. Fat people, ugly people, stupid people, one-legged people: anyone who’s got a crotch can multiply. Let’s get together and make another 11-odd billion of us to create the revenue for these coots’ Medicaid.

I’m So Angry at Old People! Is There No Outlet For My Rage?

It’s natural to hate the elderly. They move slow and in horizontal formations along the sidewalks. They play Scrabble constantly but never get any better at it. They fall over quite a lot. They leave the gas on in the apartment. They shit their pants and don’t even wake up to announce it. It’s completely natural, at times, to think, “Fuck the elderly.”

Of course, no one really wants to fuck the elderly. If you fucked some old granny out of revenge you’d maybe shatter her pelvis, in a best-case scenario. For that meager satisfaction, you’ll have to deal with the cold, wet, pruney flesh that rubs against you in your dreams. You’ll endure the taunts of friends and family who will call you “Granny-Porker.” That’s no way to vent your anger.

No, you need a creative, hands-off way to introduce a taste of comeuppance to the miserable aged in our midst. A global crisis of this magnitude calls for a taste of this generation’s own medicine: you can have your revenge through crass jokes and pranks.

These people invented youth culture and rock and roll. They also invented the “kick me” sign and the ever-popular donkey punch (circa 1952). Irony demands that these wrinkled troglodytes succumb to the powers of their own creation.

April Fool’s Day is almost upon us, and you can start practicing this year for the coming Gray Plague. Simply sneak into your neighborhood’s mausoleum-that-lives (or “retirement home”) and try your hand at one of countless classic gags.

But I’m not a creative Interweb writer! Can’t you tell me exactly what to do?

• Replace Elmer’s oxygen with a tank of concentrated fart.
• Coat the bottom of Edna’s shower with slick bacon grease.
• April 1st is on a Saturday. Start in July and call Martha’s family every Saturday to tell them she’s died until they stop believing you. Kill her on April 1st and let the family know.
• Hire World Series of Poker champion Phil Helmuth to show up and totally pwn all the residents on casino night.
• Switch the MapQuest directions for the monthly bus trip to Atlantic City with directions to the Hell’s Angels rally being held in the nearby Pine Barrens.
• Dissolve some Ex-Lax into Fred’s denture solution.
• Hide an American bald eagle in the social lobby whose specially-trained kill word happens to be “Bingo”.
• Find a war veteran who’s already had at least one minor heart attack and wake him from his after-lunch nap with a 21-gun salute.
• Set up an assisted suicide booth and substitute harmless pine air freshener for the death gas.
• Nothing says “the joke’s on you” like a toupee filled with writhing maggots.
• Mark a red line on the cafeteria door roughly six inches off the floor. Post a sign that says “Your boobs must sag this low to eat here.”
• Cut notches in Abner’s walker so he takes five steps before spilling himself all over the hard linoleum floor.
• Rig it so that when a resident pushes the emergency assistance bell by the nightstand a freight train’s horn blasts right above his head.
• Every time a visitor arrives, announce it to Old Captain Montgomery to remind him that no one ever visits him.
• Keep handing small items to the residents and “accidentally” dropping them on the floor during the pass. Don’t even pretend you’re going to bend down and pick the items up for them.
• Bolt all the bathroom doors shut and serve raisin bran and prune juice for brunch. Conveniently lose all but four adult diapers.
• Tell a group of old folks that there’s a cute little kitten stuck in a tree in the courtyard and ask for their help getting it down. Hand out salmon treats. When the group is in the courtyard, lock them in there with the mountain lion you’ve been starving for two days.
• Tell a senile woman that she’s dropped her wedding ring in the toilet and she’d better fish it out before it sinks too low. When she comes to her senses and can’t remember why she’s splashing around in toilet water, feel free to laugh and laugh.
• Replace all the large-print Reader’s Digest abridged novels with regular-print editions, and insist that it’s the same print size it’s always been.
• Hang Christmas ornaments from the old folks’ ear hair whenever they nod off.
• Take a close-up photo of the veins bulging out of Glenn’s back and convince the other residents that it’s a map for a scavenger hunt.
• Substitute bear traps for bedpans.
• Dress as a priest and read last rites to old people who seem perfectly fine.
• Burn the residents’ vegetable garden to the ground and salt the earth under its ashes.

Your mind is probably teeming with a bunch of its own ideas for crazy antics and madcap shenanigans at this point. Go! Walk among the fragile feebs and follow your heart. You’re doing God’s work every time you help inch an old person that much closer to Heaven.

Old People Scare Me. Tell Me It’ll Be All Right, Phil!

First of all, fuck your face. You don’t get to tell me what to do.

Second of all, it’ll be all right. Our top intelligence forces have been studying the decrepit enemy and have discovered their natural weaknesses.

To begin with, old people are physically fragile. If we decided to wage a full-blown war with them we could probably take most of them out with a first wave assault of Nerf footballs and slingshotted toothpaste. Our prime concern following that would be slipping around in the puddles of goo they create when they hit the ground and their papery skin bursts at the seams.

Also, the elderly are water-soluble. Leave an old woman in a tub of water for too long and she’ll just prune away into a singularity containing all the mass of a shrunken old bint. When the ice caps melt, nature will take care of our problem for us by dissolving the entire generation harmlessly away. There are two caveats. First, there’s going to be lots of water everywhere, transforming our world into a dystopian Kevin Costner-inspired quagmire. Also, any water you drink will have little subatomic bits of old man penis in it.

Finally, old people all have one thing in common: they’re about to die. I don’t know much in this mixed up, crazy world, but I know that humanity has a knack for persevering through harsh tribulations against staggering odds. Man walked on the moon. Man sailed around the world without engines. As God is my witness, Man has the temerity to wait until his parents die. Then, and only then, can we reclaim this land and our cut of the life insurance that is rightfully ours. Don’t look at the next twenty years as a time when we will be horribly burdened with the care of our elders. Look at the future as a time when we too will age, so that we may pass exponentially more grief onto our own children.

God bless you, and God bless your 401(k).

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