Now why did I come into the kitchen...?

by Steve Bremner, Philadelphia PA

Yay "old age," that magical time when you can make the entire family go wherever YOU want to go, simply by saying, "Mom-Mom needs to stay close to a restroom"!

Time to take full advantage of our not-so-sharp faculties. Yes, it's hugely frustrating when people wrongly assume that you can hear what they're saying. Then again, it gets interesting when they wrongly assume that you CAN'T hear what they're saying...

The Brits have a poem for it, 'Warning' by Jenny Joseph, an uncompromising manifesto of intended bad behavior in old age, and the inspiration for The Red Hat Society, Inc.:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter...

Better not quote the whole thing, as I'm still (barely) young enough for the copyright people to come after me. ;-) You can find it by googling "Jenny Joseph Warning" – including a reading on YouTube by the poet herself.



And the male equivalent of such red on purple sartorial defiance?

Just don't give a tinker's cuss about what you look like. I think of the statue of another English poet, John Betjeman, inside London St. Pancras train station, literally holding on to his hat as he looks up at the huge single-arch Victorian trainshed he helped save from demolition. (Again Google is our friend here:

"Wikipedia Betjeman statue") From a distance, he looks like what Londoners would call "A sack of spuds." Closer inspection reveals that his shirt collar is unbuttoned under his off-center necktie, and his left shoelace has been replaced with a knotted piece of string. Way to be remembered, Sir John!

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