Attribution: Bruce Tuten from Savannah, Georgia, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that after the keeper reported on the lunch that he and Phyllis enjoyed with 103-year-old Hilda and 99-year-old Sally, there has been some interest by others to join the next lunch meeting so they could identify themselves as “the youngest person at the table.”
Such a “youngest” identity is not that easy to come by at such places as Vista West where the preoccupation with youth has been turned on its head and the competition is to live longer than Jimmy Carter or Willie Nelson.
There is really no challenge in being young: everyone goes through it, suffering the attendant dumbness and unrealistic expectations until enough maturity sets in with the message that life is getting out of bed and going to work until your bones hurt and your brain tells you “Enough!”
“Ah, to be young again!” may occasionally be heard at lunches with the likes of Hilda and Sally, but more often age is ignored, even by those—like Phyllis, who identified as “youngest at the table.”
For those who covet that title, they are warned that it comes with no more prestige than scoring a grocery cart, but Phyllis invites competition.
The real honor and prestige, of course, is with “oldest at the table,” as in Sally and Hilda.
Photo by Bill Stokes