Take Five: How Not To Be A Little Old Lady

by Mary McHugh

I’m 72 years old and I’m 5’2” tall, which qualifies me for the little old lady club.  The trouble is, I don’t want to join. Little old ladies have certain characteristics I don’t want, and if I start to get any of them, my daughter has promised to shoot me. That’s why I’m glad I found this magazine because none of the following applies to you, but you might have met people like this.

First of all, little old ladies tell long, boring, pointless stories embellished with the most minute detail. You have to sit there and look interested while the LOL tells you about the time she got in the car to go to the bank and she had to get there before three o’clock when the banks closed but her car wouldn’t start so she had to go back in the house and call the - - - -Oh I can’t even stand to finish this story. You have to keep it short and sweet in this time of attention spans the length of a gnat’s wing.

Second, LOLs cackle. Somewhere around 40 or 50 they lose that silvery, feminine laugh that delights men’s hearts, and they start to sound like a hen. I don’t know what causes it, but I wish they’d stop. A smile will do. If something is really funny - and it’s getting harder and harder to find something really funny - then laugh, don’t cackle.

Third, LOLs have tightly curled, scrunched-up hair. Why do they keep wearing their hair like that?  I once dreamed that I was at an elegant dinner party and I was talking animatedly to the person next to me, when I noticed the woman across from me looking at me and I heard her say to her dinner companion, “I wonder what war that hairdo is from.” Then I realized you can tell what war a person lived through by her hair. WWII was page boys, head bands, pincurls, and pompadours with lots of bobbie pins. The Vietnam War was long straight hair and no make-up. And you see women in their 50’s who still haven’t cut their hair short or put on any make-up. 

Fourth, LOLs talk about their illnesses and bowel habits and friends in nursing homes. I say, get some younger friends who are still living  life. Live one yourself - take courses, travel, DO something interesting, or you’ll bore the wallpaper off the walls.

Fifth, LOLs smile all the time even when there’s nothing amusing going on. They were trained to be pleasant all the time, and I suppose that’s better than mean old ladies who complain about the terrible state of the world - especially those rotten young people.

Anyway, if my daughter hasn’t shot me, I hope to live to 120, like my heroine the French lady who promised her lawyer when she was 90 he could have her house when she died if he paid her a certain amount each month while she was still living . Thirty years later, he was dead, he had paid much more than the house was worth, and she was still alive, having given up bicycle riding and cigarettes at the age of 117, and she ate a box of chocolates every week (That’s the part I like.) Vive la France!

And Vive Senior Women! who lead interesting, useful lives and make this magazine possible. Write and tell me how you have escaped being a Little Old Lady.

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