Countdown

I was driving home tonight and happened to notice a hat on the back shelf of this Toyota Corolla in front of me. The hat was a brown trilby sort of thing with a check pattern that wouldn't qualify as plaid, but which was certainly as obnoxious. It was the sort of hat that simply could not be worn by anyone under sixty unless it was as a joke. Not surprisingly the car sported the kind of scrapes at the corners that betokened a driver whose grasp of objects and space, had it ever been there at all, was withered by age to the point where I half-expected him to back into me at the lights.

Picking on older drivers because they drive like crap isn't exactly hard - you only have to look at the moron who drove through a market at high speed, killing multiple people along the way, or the stupid bitch who recently drove through a school wall and killed a kid, or any one of countless others loose on our streets thanks to the lobbying power of AARP (which continues to ensure that none of them are tested for even basic competence). My point is that I knew almost everything I needed to know about the driver's age just by looking at the hat. Two obvious questions presented themselves:

Firstly, why is it that old people suddenly decide that any color would be great to wear, so long as it's brown. Or beige. Or tan. Or any other of a myriad variations on a theme of "dull as fuck"? We all start out young and grow up wanting to look good, in some form or another. Then we get old, but instead of just freezing their dress sense at whatever point it was at before that, old people mostly appear to find it necessary to adopt the uniform of old farts everywhere - pigeon shit grey hair and brown or grey clothes. You could wear anything you wanted. Why brown? Do your eyes start responding to different wavelengths of light or something?

Secondly, I remember those hats from when I was a little kid. Old people wore them then, even in the UK. But that was thirty years ago! The same people who took the piss out of old gits then must be among the ones dressing like them now. So what happened to them? And how did they decide to adopt a form of dress which wasn't normal for them at any point in their upbringing? I expect that when I get old I'll be wearing jeans and t-shirts. Young people will look at me and know I'm old because I'm not wearing whatever new synthetic fabric is regarded as the dog's bollocks in the future. But you sure as hell won't find me in one of those stupid hats because, get this, they never will have formed part of my dress at any point in my prior life. Ever.

Jasper Carrott did this stand-up piece years ago where he pointed out that the day you become old is the day you walk past Dunn & Co. (a purveyor of older mens' clothing in the UK, if they're still in business) and suddenly pause, thinking "That looks like a nice cardigan!" The amazing thing is not just that he was right, but that decades later the clothes that mark you out as old haven't changed!

If you're going to be old shouldn't you use the time to be slightly outrageous and enjoy it, since you don't have much future to worry about? It wasn't that long ago that I was reading one of those "heartening" stories about some old woman who'd never graduated high schood and who'd gone back in her eighties to finally get her HSE or whatever. All these kids were saying how great it was, blah, blah, blah. I couldn't help thinking "Is that the best you could do?" You have, statistically speaking, bugger all time left to live, and you're lucky if you can still live an active life, so why waste it on school? School is dull as fuck! You only do it so you can make a good living later. Obviously you learn to read, which is handy for books, and all that, but I'm assuming having lived to eighty that she could do enough of the basics to get by! It's not like she was planning for her next career move - couldn't she have found anything more interesting to do?

Mind you, it must be hard to figure out what to do with an indeterminate but probably short amount of time. I sometimes wonder what I'd do if I got the "Big C" diagnosis and was sent home with weeks to live. (Not because I'm a morbid bastard, but it's said that you should live every day like it's your last, so how else do you try and visualize it?) I could live out my days spending quality time with my family, ensuring that they remember me for my wisdom, kindness and strength in the face of adversity. Or I could head off on a week-long drug-and-whore binge in Amsterdam, ensuring that I'm remembered as a twat.

There's no right or wrong answer, I know, but one thing's for sure. When I do finally go I won't be wearing one of those fucking brown hats!


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison