Monday, September 12, 2005
Senior citizen discount not as useful as others
From the RoundTable blog
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Two months from today I will hit that magic age that qualifies me for the "senior citizen" discount at my favorite department and grocery stores.
Oh. Hurrah.
The teenagers who work behind the counters of fast-food joints have been giving me "senior citizen" discounts for years already. Get one gray hair on your head and all the youngsters in the world will assume you're the same age as their grandmothers.
Well, I have more than one gray hair on my head.
And, of course, I am the same age as their grandmothers.
(Actually, I'm older than many of their grandmothers.)
But does this qualify me for a discount that implies I've lost the ability to care for myself?
I shouldn't complain. Every little bit helps. A penny saved, etc., etc. But I am kicking and screaming into this good night. I am still plenty capable.
A few years ago, I refused to buy a membership in a local recreation center because I already qualified for their "senior citizen" discount ... a whopping 50 percent discount at that! Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Well, I got over that one. I'll get over this one, too. These discounts have been hard-won by the politically active among us and I shouldn't complain. Even if I don't really need them.
There are discounts I could use, however. For instance, a "many medicines" discount. I could have used that one for most of my life. But that's a pipe dream.
I could also use a "many cats" discount at the veterinarian's office.
Better yet, a "senior citizen" discount for my geriatric cat. He's a lot older, in cat years, than I am in keeper-of-the-cat years. Although I'm aging in that department even as I write ... even as he, the cat, wheezes and hacks and creaks on the couch.
Here's another discount someone should give me and others like me: "many fabrics." There ought to be a discount for anyone who buys more than 10 miles of fabric in a given month. I could really use that one. You think gas is expensive! You ought to be buying fabric.
Which brings me to the most important discount I can think of: "many Republicans." I want a discount for having to live in a country run by wrong-headed, ideological, Christian fundamentalists who think the fantastical "Left Behind" series of books by Tim LeHaye comprise theology reliable enough to provide guidelines for setting public policy.
But ... wait a minute. Aren't most of these miserly, environmentally rapacious and arrogant wackos elected officials?
Why, yes! They are!
So, who elected them?
Not me, as you can clearly tell from the paragraphs above.
But somebody.
A raft of somebodies who think said wackos are doing a fine job.
And ... you, if you agree with my sentiments about our current officials but failed to vote in the last election.
So actually, it's not that I need a "many Republicans" discount to save me from their war-mongering and their money-grubbing, so much as that I need a "many slackers" discount to save me, and the rest of this nation, from people too lazy to take up their responsibility as members of this society ...
... and vote.
Election Day is Nov. 8. Do something about it.
