by Rose Madeline Mula

Discrimination, that’s what it is!

I’m talking about how the media gang up on elderly drivers.  As all the front-page headlines proclaimed recently, an old gentleman rammed his car into a drugstore.   But that was probably because it was the only way he could get the attention of a sales clerk to ask where he could find the Metamucil.

No, seriously, I know the codger mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead of the brake, but that could happen to anyone, regardless of age.  However, when a younger driver does something equally stupid, we usually read about it in a little blurb on page six, if at all, and we seldom hear any radio or TV coverage.

In fact, just two days ago, a young school bus driver in a nearby town veered off the road at high speed, jumped a stone wall, and zoomed across a fifty-yard, formerly-manicured lawn and into the living room of a formerly-lovely (and formerly-solid) brick home.

Despite that, two of my formerly-favorite talk show hosts in Boston devoted most of their show the following morning to rants against elderly drivers, with nary a mention of the school bus jockey.  I emailed them that as a woman of advanced years myself (none of your business how many), I strongly resented their tirades.  I told them I’m still active and productive and I’m even still able to dress myself and brush my own teeth.  Yes, I have to take some of them out of my mouth first, but so what?  I warned that if they didn’t knock it off, I’d send my grandmother over to clobber them.

I only wish I were going to be around thirty years from now when they, too, will be classified as elderly, even though they won’t think of themselves that way.  Take it from one who knows.  Only yesterday I was just a girl.  And now, though my knees sometimes feel 107, in my head I’m still seventeen.  And I look like Angelina Jolie — only younger.   So please don’t shatter that illusion and tell me I’m incompetent just because I’ve been around a few more years than you.

All older drivers are not menaces on the road.  In many ways, we’re a heck of a lot less dangerous than most whippersnappers.

We’re not gabbing on cell phones or texting while we drive. We’re not steering with our knees (we can’t bend them that high) while wolfing down a Big Mac and trying to mop up the ketchup dripping from our fries or keep our beer from spilling.  (Our doctors have put all of those on our no-no list.)

We’re not taking our eyes off the road and our hands off the wheel to make out with a “friend with benefits” in the passenger seat, or on our lap.  (We don’t have many friends left alive — with or without benefits.)

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