Thanks, Thomas Jefferson, I couldn’t agree with you more. Having recently reached the half century mark, I do believe I have acquired “certain unalienable rights”:
1. Being able to refer to myself in the third person ( “Megan wants a ham and cheese sandwich.” )
2. Having grandchildren while I still look too young to have grandchildren
3. Tisking at young, inexperienced adults as they attempt to parent their children in the grocery store, mall, or park
4. Sending food back to be reheated/cooked more/re-seasoned/or totally removed from my plate when dining out (this also includes while being a guest in other people’s homes–hey, I’m dining out, right??) while exclaiming loudly, “What are you trying to do, KILL ME?”
5. Hushing young people in the movie theater
6. Complaining that the sound is too loud/not loud enough in the movie theater
7. Demanding that the room temperature be raised/lowered while at a movie, club, concert, assembly or another’s home (regardless of whether I’m wearing removable layers or toting a sweater) while exclaiming loudly: “What are you trying to do, FREEZE ME*?”
8. Receiving pounds of unsolicited mail ftrom AARP each week (though in fact I’ve been receiving mail from them since the ripe old age of 16 )
9. Offering unwanted advice to grocery clerks, nurses, store managers, waiters, cashiers, postal workers, mechanics, bank tellers, and countless other people who couldn’t give a rodent’s rear about my ideas for how to “really make things work better.”
10. Beginning 70% of all my sentences with the words, “Well, when I was your age…”
11. Beginning the remaining 30% with the words, “You know what you should do…”
12. Incorporating the following words into my daily conversations: whippersnapper, rapscallion, missy, sonny, and young’un
13. Additional peppering of said conversations with outdated “cuss” words, such as: confound it, consarn it, and dagnab it
* Or in the case of the room being too hot, exclaiming loudly: “What are you trying to do, GIVE ME HEAT STROKE?”
Please consider this a personal invitation to all of you in the “50 and Above” age category to join me in claiming your inalienable rights–especially the right to be a huge pain in the ass from this day forward…