Presents – When you are a child, you get big presents like a gym set, bicycles, basketball goal, play kitchen or a battery power car to ride in. The older you get, the presents for birthday and Christmas get smaller. Later in life it may be a tie or a pair of socks but regardless, it will fit into a little bitty box. Side note – For our older children and son in-laws I still like to buy them at least one toy to relive their childhood.
Clothes – For guys (not ladies) the older you get the less clothes you need. Guys could go on a four-day trip with two changes of clothes. We just seem to wear the same ones several times before washing them. When we all were in high school, you had to have something different on every day to mix it up. You never got caught wearing the same shirt two days in a row. When you get to be an older guy (again, not ladies) we can wear the same jeans four days in a row and the truth of it is, we don’t care what other people think.
Food – for guys, when we find something we like, we can eat it every day for a week and love it as much at the end of the week as at the beginning. Older folks do not like their restaurant server to be new and in training because the order usually comes out wrong. Elaine and I have this thing we say when this happens, and it involves my brother in-law.
Technology – when you get older you just want it to work. You don’t care about all the new functions in your latest update. We just want to do what we want to do and let the young folks figure out all the bells and whistles.
Entertainment – A guy may watch reruns of Andy Griffith. Jesse Stone and NCIS multiple times and be as happy as can be. Guys can read the same book several times and enjoy it as much the 2rd time as the 1st time. All we want is for Prime and Netflix to work when we push the button. We don’t care about all the new categories and favorites etc. We go to the “continue watching” section and we are good to go.
Standing in line – as we get older, we don’t like standing in line at the Starbucks behind someone ordering 10 different drinks with five adjectives each for their office staff. We want to walk in and go straight to the counter and get our coffee. No flavors, no whips or swirls, toppings etc. Just coffee. We like to use the terms, small, medium and large, not the fancy names the store wants you to use. I had this barista one time that made it her mission to make me use the term “grande” instead of medium. I told her to look at the three cups and with her own wisdom, pick the one she thinks is the medium. She gave me a Venti just for spite. Ha
Traffic – it is a fact of life if you drive, but older people seem a little more relaxed and acceptant because we are not in the same “hurry up” phase of life as when we were young.
Love and family – As we all get older, this is the area of our life where we like to spend more time and more focus on. Our spouse, children and grand children take center stage in our life and in our hearts. The older we get the more important family becomes because we are not thinking about business with the same intensity we once were.
There are many advantages to getting older. Social Security, lower insurance cost through Medicare, driving an old truck without trying to impress anyone, eating what you want, watching what you want, taking naps when you want, more free time and living life to the fullest. Age has its advantages and hopefully everyone reading this blog over age 60 can relate to some of the content. KT