I’m having a birthday in a few days.
What can I say?
I’m still alive.
I’m still working in advertising.
I have at least 3/4 of my marbles and I’m blessed with a much younger wife and a large, wonderful family, including two more fabulous grandchildren named Teddy and Phoebe.
Phoebe? I woke up the other day thinking who’d ever believe an Italian guy from West 7th Street and Avenue U would have a granddaughter named Phoebe!
I’m convinced family, friends and laughter is what keeps old people like me alive.
Below, you will find five funny “old people” lines that I culled from a recent offering on “Lovers of the Human Race,” a wonderful site on Facebook run by a man named David J. Spencer.
It’s funny, very funny:
1. Sorry I haven’t gotten anything done today. I’ve been in the produce department trying to open this stupid plastic bag.
2. My tolerance for idiots is extremely low today. I used to have some immunity built up, but obviously there is a new strain out there.
3. As I watch this generation try and rewrite our history, one thing I’m sure of – it will be misspelled and have no punctuation.
4. Hard to believe I once had a phone attached to a wall, and when it rang, I picked it up without knowing who was calling, and I’m still alive.
5. Felt uncomfortable driving into the cemetery. The GPS blurted out, “You have reached your final destination.”
It’s too hot to think, so I’m going back to a column I wrote a few years ago…
WHEN OLD PEOPLE TAKE OVER THE WORLD
Do you want to live in a Bernie Sanders world where everything will be free except freedom?
I don’t.
This is our chance to take over the world.
Those of us who are fed up and won’t take it anymore are coming into power.
According to the world’s greatest authority on old people, Michael W. Hodin, CEO of the Global Coalition on Aging, the world’s 60+ population is set to double to 2 billion between now and the next few years, with a combined spending power well in excess of $15 trillion.
Do you know what that means?
People over 70 will have enough votes to decide any election.
We’re talking millions of votes.
The thought of old people having millions of votes is enough to cause a pandering politician like Chuck Schumer to have an orgasm.
It’s time for old people to kick ass.
We’re strong. We’re tough.
We will be the last generation that remembers what it was like to work 8…10…12 hours a day to provide for our families.
It’s time we changed some of the little things that have been bothering us that millennials have been too dumb or too lazy to care about.
What’s first?
Having come back from a short vacation I can report my body has been scalded in showers wherever I have been.
Our first demand is that showers in every home and every hotel in the world – and that includes off-the-wall countries like Uruguay and Kyrgyzstan – should be forced to have the same uniform type of showers, with a faucet marked “HOT” in large letters and another faucet the same size marked “COLD” right next to it. No more high-tech, unmarked, new-fangled mystery faucets that are guaranteed to burn or freeze your body before you can turn them off.
And it’s insane that the floors of showers all over the world are made of marble, which turns slippery the moment it’s touched by a drop of water.
We must demand that every shower floor be a Velcro-type surface to keep a old guy like me from sliding and, quite frankly, almost breaking his ass like I did a few years ago at the incredibly beautiful, ridiculously expensive Hotel Splendido in Portofino, Italy.
And those teeny weeny bottles of complimentary shampoo and conditioner you find in every shower must be revamped in hotels all over the world.
Here’s why:
You’re in the shower. You have soap in your eyes. You decide to shampoo your hair or, in my case, your beard, and it is impossible to read the word “shampoo,” which is printed in unreadable little type on the little teeny tiny bottle.
What’s more, the top of the little shampoo bottle is cemented on, and so with wet soapy hands it cannot be opened with anything less than an industrial-sized pair of pliers.
And when it’s opened, is it shampoo? Or is it a dreaded mint body wash or mouthwash? Which, once it’s in my beard, will have me smelling like a stick of Wrigley’s mint chewing gum for the rest of the day.
But I’m just getting started.
Do you know what kills more old people than any disease?
Broken hips caused by bicycles!
You’re crossing the street, you’ve got the traffic light in your favor, and you’re carefully dodging millennials who all cross the street with their eyes glued to their cell phones, hypnotized by an Instagram of a kale salad that looks so healthy it’s making them drool all over their stupid chins.
Then WHAM! Some idiot driving his or her bike, going the wrong way on a one-way street, has hit you and now you’re writhing on the street with broken hip – a death penalty for older people.
So I say any idiot who hits and breaks the hip of anyone over 70 should receive the death penalty.
Or worse, sentence them to 30 days on Rikers Island.
There’s so much more we can do. In the two minutes you just spent reading my rant, more than 500 people in the world turned 70 years old.
Do you know the power this gives us over every disgusting corrupt politician all over the globe?
We own them. So let’s throw them out of office.
Goodbye Mitch McConnell. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.
Now join hands with me as we sing, “WE ARE THE WORLD.”
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