Manipulation Allergy

Old peo­ple are not cranky, they have just devel­oped manip­u­la­tion aller­gies. The have lived long enough to see through things; you can’t fool them; you will not go around them; you will not get their coop­er­a­tion by treat­ing them as chil­dren either. Not only can they see through social games, they will tell you directly what they think of the games (and you too if you are part of them).

I love old peo­ple. They will smile and nod, and then they will tell you what they think or what they are going to do no mat­ter what. Don’t try to sell them some­thing they don’t need; you are wast­ing your time. They know what they need; they know what they want; they know what they are going to do; get off their porch.

By the time you are forty, you start smelling a rat in the cul­tural cheese. On your fifti­eth birth­day, you know what the rat looks like and its name. You real­ize that the clock is tick­ing and that you no longer have time for the silli­ness that gets passed off as a bet­ter way to do things (espe­cially in pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, or what it really costs to fix your car). At sixty, a world of stuff has been resolved. You know to do only what works, and you have the amaz­ing abil­ity to ignore all sorts of “save the world” schemes (espe­cially when they include a lit­tle box at the bot­tom of the page sug­gest­ing how much you could con­tribute to the cause).

Wise old peo­ple smile a lot. They have seen it all and are now begin­ning to see the cycles repeat. Watch them size up a stranger or any­one that looks like they are sell­ing some­thing. One glance and the ball­game is over. That may sound prej­u­di­cial, but they have been there before and they know they don’t have to go there again. Nature bestows wis­dom on those pay­ing atten­tion through life. It also grants some extra years to many that kept men­tal notes about nutri­tion and high­way speed limits.

“Life begins at forty” is fol­lowed by “get off my doorstep” at fifty, and “we tried that and it didn’t work” at sixty. Don’t write the post-forty crowd off. They know how to get it all done; they get to the heart of a mat­ter quickly; they don’t fix what isn’t bro­ken; they do more before noon than the younger set will accom­plish all day long.