Can You Speak Louder?

There must be something that happens to people when they get old which results in the complete atrophy of any remaining good taste or sense of style. I think I pointed out before that old people's taste in clothes seems to run to beige, brown, grey and not much else, all of it topped off with hats that only an old git would choose to wear. Well there's another way that old farts choose to advertise their proximity to the grave - with their cars.

Step one is the selection. First go out and buy a huge Cadillac, Mercury, Buick or something similar. Then have the dealer fit three vital aftermarket options:

• White wall tires
  
• A vinyl roof
  
• One of those chrome parcel racks on the rear trunk lid

These accessories make absolutely no sense whatsoever - nothing looks quite so shabby on an old car as a tatty vinyl roof - but the stupidest thing has to be the parcel rack. Tell me, how many times have you ever seen anyone carry anything on their parcel rack? I saw one of these specimens today - an old bitch weaving down the road in a huge sedan with a vinyl roof and a parcel rack. She could hardly see over the dashboard and was so old that her next trip might well be made lying down in the back of an even larger car, maybe in a big wooden box. You know she had to have made a special request for that parcel rack but you also know that although she'd probably had them fitted to her last five cars she had never used one once.

Maybe it's the car dealers who do it. You know they're always trying to sell "dealer-installed" accessories in order to boost their dismal profit margins on new car sales. In the case of younger buyers it's all about alloy wheels, spoilers and upgraded stereos but for old people there must be a list of items they try and get sold when they take the order.

"OK Mr.Fulldepends, that's one Cadillac DTS in beige, now how about a nice vinyl roof and a parcel shelf then? It'll make the old girls at the day care center wet with desire. At least the ones who weren't wet already."

"Oooh yes please! And can you lower the seat so I can't see out the front, and install the box of tissues on the back shelf. And I'd like a new plaid rug too."

Maybe I'm feeling less than well-disposed towards old people today because I happened to catch a bit of "The Ten Commandments" on TV today, with Charlton Heston as Moses standing there with his huge beard and sandals giving Yul Bryner as Pharaoh a hard time. And all the while I was wishing that Pharaoh would just cut his fucking head off and be done with it.

"Pharaoh! Let my people go!"

"Take him away and cut his fucking balls off. And make him get a haircut, for Osiris's sake!"

When Moses eventually reached the Red Sea and parted the waves with his staff I could have sworn I saw him climb in an Oldsmobile 88 with a brown vinyl roof, put on a hat and drive really slowly in the left lane all the way across. And he ran over three goats and never even stopped. Typical.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison