Little Old Lady Who?

(October 22, 2007)

You know who sucks? Every old lady I ever meet anymore.

What happened to the small, sweet old ladies with crinkly laughing eyes who used to call me "dear"? Did I dream that for 30 years, all the bubbly, adorable little old ladies?

I used to volunteer in old age homes and I don't remember any little old ladies sucking. Even the ladies who were, at first, curmudgeonly, eventually warmed up. Henrietta pretty much barked at me whenever I'd come to her room. If she could've growled she would have. Which I could understand, I myself like my privacy. But then one day we discovered we had the same birthday and for some reason that melted the old bat and we became friends. Aside from the nursing home, there were the regular old ladies I'd meet in supermarkets and whatnot...

Seems like every single elderly lady I meet now just SUCKS. I saw this woman, white hair, laden with shopping bags, laboring up Allston Street. I was on my way to work but even so I stopped to ask her if she needed any help. She practically bit my head off.

Then there's Stop & Shop in Allston. Due to some hilarious quirk of the universe, it seems that every single time I'm there it just happens to be the day a busload of little old ladies takes over the store. And they just do not care. They will ram their cart into your ankles without a thought.

The other day I saw a youngish old lady, in her late 60s or early 70s maybe, outside the Dollar Store. She had just come out and was tugging at a bandage on her hand. She managed to yank it off and, oh yes, tossed it angrily to the sidewalk within mere feet of a trash bin. It lay there with the wound-side up, dark brown in the center and ringed with a sinister-looking yellowish pus-like substance. There are CHILDREN running all over that area, they LOVE the Dollar Store.

I was doing laundry a few weeks ago when suddenly this insane horrorshow of a crone comes tearing into the laundromat YELLING. She's yelling "When does this place close how late is this open do you work here where's the sign where's the sign where's the SIGN!" What the mother...? She went on yelling, pretty much constantly, the entire time, screeching at everyone in the place to help her work the change machine, set the controls on the washer and put in detergent. It was like a one-woman hurricane of caterwauling insanity and none of the other laundering victims had any idea what to do with her.

Crikey, maybe all the gentle ones get eaten by the mean ones now. Like baby gerbils.