{"id":476,"date":"2010-03-01T01:30:24","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T01:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.atomicnewstools.com\/pages\/?p=476"},"modified":"2012-01-28T01:30:47","modified_gmt":"2012-01-28T01:30:47","slug":"it-truly-was-a-senior-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/it-truly-was-a-senior-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"It Truly Was a Senior Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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So here is what happened. My lovely fianc\u00e9, aka my beautiful mystery companion \u2014 which is a line from a Jackson Browne tune \u2014 and I were slated to attend the Maya Angelou lecture at Northeast Texas Community College last Friday night. What a treat, this famed poet and lecturer here in East Texas. Alas, Ms. Angelou became ill and postponed her appearance until April. As a consolation prize, we headed to the movies.<\/p>\n

I bought the tickets while my BMC was engaged in conversation with a couple of acquaintances that had spotted her. We rarely go to the movies, being recluses when not at work. We prefer to rent or buy DVDs. So I studied the prices and calculated that, at $8.75 each, this was going to set me back $17.50 for two tickets to the evening feature.<\/p>\n

When the attendant gave me back $7 from my twenty-dollar bill I questioned her.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you give me back too much money?\u201d<\/p>\n

She shook her head.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there a special tonight?\u201d She moved on to the next customer.<\/p>\n

I ambled off to my BMC and wondered aloud about how the tickets had only cost me $6.50 each instead of $8.75, and that I couldn\u2019t figure out why. I got one of those \u201cOh, honey\u201d looks that we clueless males get from time to time from the women who love us despite our cluelessness.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe gave you the senior discount,\u201d my BMC said.<\/p>\n

I dove into the pocket of my sports jacket for the ticket stubs and pulled them out. Sure enough, in all-caps, they both said: SENIOR. My immediate instinct was to go back up to the ticket window and protest. But the line was too long, and the movie was about to start. So I spent the next several minutes on the way to our seats whining to my BMC about the grave injustice that had been foisted upon me. A senior? Me? Are these people blind? Where is the manager? Can I file some kind of age-discrimination lawsuit?<\/p>\n

My beloved squeezed my hand. \u201cIt\u2019s because I wasn\u2019t with you,\u201d she said. \u201cThen they would have known better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, that is true. Although my BMC is only 30 months younger than me, she looks easily a decade younger. I figure by the laws of osmosis this makes me look younger when we are together. Since she was off talking to her friends when I was making the transaction, I surely looked like some lonely old codger buying tickets for himself and his unseen aged mother.\u00a0 So I was given the senior discount out of sympathy.<\/p>\n

So it is her fault. That\u2019s my story, etc.<\/p>\n

My BMC pointed out that most folks would appreciate having saved $4.50 on their movie tickets by mistakenly being labeled a \u201csenior.\u201d (For the record, I am 54. I don\u2019t know what this particular theater defines as a senior, but any business that defines folks at 54 as a senior is desperate for business, in my humble view. Of course, maybe I look 65 or older. That\u2019s the scary part. But the attendant never asked my age, which is even more<\/em> depressing.)<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t appreciate saving money at the expense of being prematurely being labeled a senior citizen. But then a pair of events occurred over the next two days that had me wondering if I truly were losing it:<\/p>\n

\u2022 I used the wrong first name for one of our Saturday columnists when laying out the opinion page. When I e-mailed him to apologize and explained I had mixed his name up with a long-dead weekly newspaper editor with a similar-sounding last name, he kindly said I had been calling him Paul for a couple of years, off and on. His name is Frank. Sheesh.<\/p>\n

\u2022 I made a cup of tea Sunday night. Without thinking, I then pulled the lid off to empty the pot. A cloud of boiling steam came out and scalded three fingers on my right hand. I knew better and spent the next several hours in pretty severe pain until the aforementioned BMC via telephone saved me by Googling a home remedy. Remember this, in case it happens to you. Yellow mustard in a poultice of paper towels will ease the pain, though it might take an hour or so.<\/p>\n

So maybe I am inching toward senior status faster than I anticipated. Just ask Paul, I mean Frank \u2014 or my scalded fingers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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