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.
