WHY ARE WE SO STUBBORN?
Why do you hit your head against the wall?
Because it feels so good when I stop.
I see so many people my age struggling to carry packages they could put in a trolley if they would only spend the money to buy one or staggering up set of stairs when the escalator is right there across the hall. I know there is a better way. But just you try to TELL them that.
Do not even consider “Mother, if you would walk on the side of the street, you wouldn’t block everyone hurrying to the office” because it isn’t going to work. Your mother knows that she keeps her balance better in the middle of the sidewalk and avoiding a broken shoulder is a lot more important to her than her social responsibility not to impede the pedestrians on their way to something she already did years ago….and if she wants to wear her bedroom slippers with that horrid coat…so what? SHE is retired.
Just try telling your Dad that if he would have purchased power steering on that huge gas eating clunker he drives, he could parallel park in seconds and not keep smashing his front headlight. He is going to give you that look you hate and say, “I bought this car used ten years ago and I paid cash for it. I know how it works and it doesn’t give me any surprises. If it takes me 40 minutes to park it, that isn’t MY problem….
I like familiar things. I don’t have to learn how to use them. Silly as it may seem, I don’t like a dishwasher. It feels better to me to wash each dish and know it is clean. It is the same with the car I drive. I can still remember when I bought my Toyota Matrix. It was bigger than my ancient Valiant, more fuel efficient and had a great CD player. The first year I drove it, I smashed the right fender so many times the auto repair shop recognized my voice when I called. I hit the wall of the garage twice and I drove in the middle of the road for at least 6 months before I figured out that there was plenty of room on the right. My old car soaked up gas like a drunkard, didn’t have power steering and when it rained water flooded the back seat. But I never hit anything with it. It was familiar. You cannot get me to admit that it wasn’t the king of all cars. I loved it. I understood it. And it understood me.
That is how it is with older people. We cling to what we used to do because that is comfortable and feels safe. Take credit cards. When I was a kid they didn’t exist. I paid for everything with cash. The idea of shoving a piece of plastic into the wall and getting money was as ridiculous to me as looking up at the clouds and expecting it to rain silver coins. Now I cannot imagine living or traveling without my credit card but I know a lot of my friends who never use them. They like to see the cash, pay with it and get the receipt for the same reason they like to watch your face when they talk to you before they give you an answer. It might not make sense to you, but it does to them.
There is a couple across the street in their mid eighties who live in a three story house. Bob has sciatica and Sarah has Multiple Sclerosis. They both are in so much pain, they had to crawl up the stairs to get to their bedroom. Finally, after years of coaxing and talking and convincing, they allowed their children to buy them a stair-master so they could both ride upstairs in seconds instead of the half hour they both took, each helping the other. You guessed it. The stair-master has been sitting for five years now, in pristine condition at the bottom of the stairs and my neighbors struggle up the stairs to the bedroom they have slept in for almost 60 years.
I know just what you are thinking. Why don’t they move the bed downstairs to the living room? I asked them that and Sarah looked at me as if I had suggested she dance naked in the street. “I love my living room just the way it is. I remember when we redecorated it in 2000 and it took me forever to get used to where everything was. I sure don’t want to go through that again.”
Will and Deborah will celebrate their golden anniversary this year. It will be a sad celebration because Will’s Cerebral Palsy has gotten so much worse and he is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Their children have been begging them to have a care giver in to help Deborah cook meals, bathe Will and get him into bed but she is adamant. “I don’t want strangers walking around my house,” she told her daughter. “They all have butterfingers..”
About three months after she said this, she called her daughter and said, ”I just took Will to the doctor and he had the best idea!!! He told me about an agency that will send someone out to bathe Will and get him into bed. Isn’t that a wonderful idea?”
Her daughter had the wisdom to say, “I think so too!” and not, ”Why wouldn’t you listen to ME when I told you the same thing?” The truth is that if we are going to change our minds, we have to hear a reason from what we think is an expert. That expert is never our children. Ever.
So next time you say to your mom, “Why don’t you order those groceries on line?” don’t expect her to say ”What a good idea!” I will give you odds that her response would be “I like to pick out my own vegetables and fruit. Those delivery people don’t care. All they want to do is make money.”
The older we get, the more we do the things we want, not the things we should. We have earned that freedom and you will too, eventually. I make my own rules and take my own advice. When I ushered at The Opera, I seated a 95 year old lady and when I went back to help the next patron, she moved two rows closer. I came back down the aisle to seat someone in the seat she had moved into and I said, “Mrs. Stoneham, that isn’t your seat. “ She looked up at me her mouth a straight determined line. “I LIKE it here,” she said.
That is what we are about. We are going to do what we like and the only way you are going to understand it is when you are 95, sitting in a theater in the seat you want. The usher might have moved you when you were 60 but when you are 95, you’ve earned the right to sit wherever you like.
