seniors

.

I recently sat down with a group of my contemporaries at the Pleasantville Seniors Center to discuss the state of the damned nation. Overall, we’re not impressed.

In an effort to help any politician who might be interested in turning this country around and snatching the coveted senior vote in 2012, I am pleased to provide a brief summary of our concerns, insights, suggestions and thoughts on the burning political issues of the day.

 

This topic generated a lively discussion and is without doubt the number one issue among the seniors I spoke with.

We all understand there is a crisis in the sector but if you cut through the bluster and political rhetoric you’ll come to understand that there’s plenty of damned health care to go around – we’re just not dishing it out wisely.

The major problem, of course, is that there are too many young people clogging up the hospitals. You can’t get wheeled into an ER these days without running over some layabout teen moaning on about his infected nose ring, venereal warts or skateboard injury. If we weeded out the nuisance cases and self-inflicted idiocy I’m quite confident there’d be ample to time to scope my colon, tune up my pacemaker and conduct further research into the development of bionic hips.

What we need to do is issue every American citizen a $1000 health care gift card each January and advise them to budget their illnesses wisely. If one of these damned young people goes on a “bender” in the first week and ends up needing emergency surgery, anal suturing and a gross of Tetracycline, they’ll either have to suck up the discomfort until next year or pony up the dough and pay for it themselves.

 

Seems to us seniors that if we really want to reduce our “carbon footprint” we might want to stop churning out young people that have size 17 feet before they’re out of puberty. I can lay down in their footprints for Christ’s sake.

Their damned t-shirts require more cotton than you’d find in the sails of your average merchant clipper and every time one of these lumbering giants sits down to a meal they decimate 3 per cent of the worlds food supply.

If we’re serious about cleaning up the environment let’s forget about smokestacks and try producing smaller people – they consume less, use less energy and create less waste. If we take the hormones out of the milk supply, bind their feet and get them smoking before 6th grade we can get this planet cleaned up lickity-split.

 

In general, we seniors are all for it.

In fact, some of us would go so far as to suggest that poverty be mandatory for every American under the age of 30. It’s a proven fact that being down on your luck builds character and deters waste. Just look at the men that came out of the great depression – they may have been surly bastards but there’s no denying they understood the value of a dollar and a hard day’s work.

A little financial desperation would do young people a world of good – and also introduce them to valuable skills like pigeon trapping, sock darning and the ABCs of Shantytown construction.

Once we teach damned young people that there is no shame in poverty, perhaps they’ll stop trying to buy their way out of it with money they don’t have.

 

The old boys at the seniors center were running out of steam by the time we hit this topic but the general consensus is we’re not overly concerned.

Like politicians, we don’t tend to worry about things that might occur outside of a 4-year window and are confident that when we finally give up the damned ghost there should still be enough crude oil floating around to fire up the crematoriums and power our escalator rides to heaven.

So go ahead and drill, mine or tilt at windmills all you like. As long as we have our sweaters and long-johns in the interim, we old folks will be just fine.

Next week, part two of the senior policy platform including issues of National Security, Economic Reform, Education and Seniors’ Rights.