dilettantedude
07-13-2006, 09:00 PM
I didn’t know there was “a moment” when you crested life’s big breaker and headed off toward the beach. There was no finish gun. No one told me that denial wouldn’t work forever. Did I expect a License Agreement to pop up on my goddamn computer screen when I turned 60, asking me to click “Please Press Accept If You Agree To Turn 60”. Hell no.
I thought I could go on pretending for at least another decade or two that I wasn’t really an Old Fart. I labored happily under this delusion until the Fateful Day Kroger’s automatic checkout picked me out of the lineup like a cheetah cutting an crippled gazelle out of the herd.
I had just hit “Pay Now” in the self-checkout lane when a new button I’d never seen before (I swear, I’m not making this up) popped up, “Do You Qualify for a Senior Citizen Discount?” I reached out to take my discount…. snatched my hand back.
Leapin’ lizards! They had nearly got me.
I looked around at the attendant behind the control station, who appeared to be studiously ignoring me. Hmmm…. I scrutinized the people standing around me. Had they seen? I looked around for the camera. The screen continued flashing The Question at me.
I had turned 60 not a week ago, and I really had never seen this button in years of automated checkouts at Kroger. Something was fishy. Had to be a camera somewhere.
No camera. Nobody hiding behind the shelves ready to pop out laughing at the joke. I looked at the attendant again. Still ignoring me. I squinted suspiciously at the Senior Citizen Discount button, half expecting it to be gone, a spectre of Apocalypse vanished. It was still there, waiting expectantly for me to accept my discount, and seal my bargain with the bastard on the pale horse and his sidekick. Cold sweat rolled down my armpits.
Shaken, I asked the attendant what age counted as a Senior Citizen. SIXTY, he replied, I swear in All Caps, with a smirk and a malicious gleam in his eye. What a sicko. The lady behind me was getting impatient, edging closer. The button flashed patiently. It only had to be pushed once for me to lose my youth, but I had to resist it every time. It could outwait me.
“What the hell kind of Faustian bargain is this?” I exploded, staring wildly at my screen, then the attendant.
He jumped, then grabbed for his phone. The red one. “Uh-oh, Code Four! Got another old guy slipped his moorings at auto checkout.” Heads snapped around. Moms shushed me with a glare. The impatient lady behind me backed away with an alarmed look on her face.
Except all the Old Farts, of course, who just kept on pushing their carts and growing hair in strange places. Now I knew why I never saw Old Farts using the automated checkout. They aren’t really senile or too blind to read the display. They had been Assimilated. They had hit The Button. They had sold their youth for filthy lucre and could no longer bear to return to the scene of their downfall, pressing The Button again and again, fatal contract sealed.
I stood frozen in existential crisis, staring around me. Didn’t they all get it? I had received The Button on my screen! Practically on my birthday.
Security showed up on the run. “Would you mind coming with us, Sir?” I pointed accusingly at The Button. “You ever see this before?” I yelled. “I never saw this before! What the hell kind of sick joke is this?”
“Quietly, please, Sir! You’re scaring people.” The Old Farts didn’t miss a beat. Shuffle, shuffle.
“You don’t understand!” I hollered. “I can do stairs backwards on Rollerblades, dammit! I can’t be 60!”
“Yes, Sir. There are children present, Sir.” The guards exchanged Significant Glances and started fumbling for their handcuffs.
The manager hurried up, puffing. “What seems to be the problem?”
The security guards explained that I was at the automated checkouts when I just lost it and started hollering about a button and scaring people. The manager looked at me and understanding lit his face.
“That’s ok, guys, you can let him go now. I think I understand what happened.”
I glared at the squirt. What the hell did he know? He hadn’t gotten The Button yet. He didn’t have clumps of gnarly hair growing out of strange places. He wouldn’t look like a werewolf inside a week if he didn’t shave his ears every morning.
“Sir, you don’t have to push The Button,” he advised me kindly.
Oh. Relief flooded through me. Youth again throbbed in my veins. My gnarled, hunched posture straightened, infirmity falling away like Kevin Spacey in the last scene of “The Usual Suspects”. My step firmed. I gazed around me at all the other Old Farts like an eagle among sparrows.
I didn’t have to push The Button. I could wait as long as I wanted before I turned 60. Safe!
Denial triumphs again!
I thought I could go on pretending for at least another decade or two that I wasn’t really an Old Fart. I labored happily under this delusion until the Fateful Day Kroger’s automatic checkout picked me out of the lineup like a cheetah cutting an crippled gazelle out of the herd.
I had just hit “Pay Now” in the self-checkout lane when a new button I’d never seen before (I swear, I’m not making this up) popped up, “Do You Qualify for a Senior Citizen Discount?” I reached out to take my discount…. snatched my hand back.
Leapin’ lizards! They had nearly got me.
I looked around at the attendant behind the control station, who appeared to be studiously ignoring me. Hmmm…. I scrutinized the people standing around me. Had they seen? I looked around for the camera. The screen continued flashing The Question at me.
I had turned 60 not a week ago, and I really had never seen this button in years of automated checkouts at Kroger. Something was fishy. Had to be a camera somewhere.
No camera. Nobody hiding behind the shelves ready to pop out laughing at the joke. I looked at the attendant again. Still ignoring me. I squinted suspiciously at the Senior Citizen Discount button, half expecting it to be gone, a spectre of Apocalypse vanished. It was still there, waiting expectantly for me to accept my discount, and seal my bargain with the bastard on the pale horse and his sidekick. Cold sweat rolled down my armpits.
Shaken, I asked the attendant what age counted as a Senior Citizen. SIXTY, he replied, I swear in All Caps, with a smirk and a malicious gleam in his eye. What a sicko. The lady behind me was getting impatient, edging closer. The button flashed patiently. It only had to be pushed once for me to lose my youth, but I had to resist it every time. It could outwait me.
“What the hell kind of Faustian bargain is this?” I exploded, staring wildly at my screen, then the attendant.
He jumped, then grabbed for his phone. The red one. “Uh-oh, Code Four! Got another old guy slipped his moorings at auto checkout.” Heads snapped around. Moms shushed me with a glare. The impatient lady behind me backed away with an alarmed look on her face.
Except all the Old Farts, of course, who just kept on pushing their carts and growing hair in strange places. Now I knew why I never saw Old Farts using the automated checkout. They aren’t really senile or too blind to read the display. They had been Assimilated. They had hit The Button. They had sold their youth for filthy lucre and could no longer bear to return to the scene of their downfall, pressing The Button again and again, fatal contract sealed.
I stood frozen in existential crisis, staring around me. Didn’t they all get it? I had received The Button on my screen! Practically on my birthday.
Security showed up on the run. “Would you mind coming with us, Sir?” I pointed accusingly at The Button. “You ever see this before?” I yelled. “I never saw this before! What the hell kind of sick joke is this?”
“Quietly, please, Sir! You’re scaring people.” The Old Farts didn’t miss a beat. Shuffle, shuffle.
“You don’t understand!” I hollered. “I can do stairs backwards on Rollerblades, dammit! I can’t be 60!”
“Yes, Sir. There are children present, Sir.” The guards exchanged Significant Glances and started fumbling for their handcuffs.
The manager hurried up, puffing. “What seems to be the problem?”
The security guards explained that I was at the automated checkouts when I just lost it and started hollering about a button and scaring people. The manager looked at me and understanding lit his face.
“That’s ok, guys, you can let him go now. I think I understand what happened.”
I glared at the squirt. What the hell did he know? He hadn’t gotten The Button yet. He didn’t have clumps of gnarly hair growing out of strange places. He wouldn’t look like a werewolf inside a week if he didn’t shave his ears every morning.
“Sir, you don’t have to push The Button,” he advised me kindly.
Oh. Relief flooded through me. Youth again throbbed in my veins. My gnarled, hunched posture straightened, infirmity falling away like Kevin Spacey in the last scene of “The Usual Suspects”. My step firmed. I gazed around me at all the other Old Farts like an eagle among sparrows.
I didn’t have to push The Button. I could wait as long as I wanted before I turned 60. Safe!
Denial triumphs again!