Sometimes others’ jumped-to
assumptions about you are your friend. Which doesn’t happen very often
(certainly in the general area where I live).
Since my February 12 update of
that earlier entry, I have gotten a senior discount at a few local fast-food
places about half-a-dozen times. Without expressly claiming I’m a senior. It is
usually at a McDonald’s in Franklin Borough, Sussex County ,
N.J. , or a Dunkin Donuts I like to go to in Orange County , N.Y.
But just the other day, February
27, it happened at a Dunkin Donuts where it hadn’t happened before, one in
Morris County, N.J., that I frequently go to. Again, a twenty-something
bestowed the favor, and she is one who has waited on me several times before,
never before assessing me as a senior.
As empirical observation and
easy inferences tell me, all it takes is having grey whiskers, now maybe two-and-a-half
weeks’ worth, that may be as awe-provoking a sight of fuzziness as is covering
anything that would emerge butt-first out of a hole in the ground, eyes blinking
dazedly, after three months of hard winter.
So little else has been required.
No AARP magazine under my arm. No low singing of a classic Sinatra tune or
something from Guys and Dolls. No
muttering the likes of “I have my good days and my bad days” or “You [young
person addressed] should value your health when you have it, because when you
get to be my age….” (Actually,
declined health is an issue for me, but not of the severity of seniors’.) Just
the sight of me clinches the deal (and the crazy, grey winter hat helps).
Who says you can’t get a break
in this country?
##
Here’s another thing I need not
do to get the small favor of the senior discount. You may remember the routines
in Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
where Arte Johnson, as the shuffling old
man with overcoat and wild white hair clamped down with a hat, approaches Ruth Buzzi as the docile, homely old woman with
hair pasted down with a hair net. She’s been sitting on a park bench, and he
sits next to her before uttering his spiel. He would say something that offends
her (and makes us laugh) and she starts swatting him repeatedly with her purse.
Well, one routine had him
shuffle up to her, sit on the park bench too close to her, and in his
insinuating, muttering voice, him saying, “Do you believe in the hereafter?” At
which she, compliantly, nods yes. “Then,” he says, “you know what I’m here
after.”
At which, in high dudgeon, she
would rise and start swatting him repeatedly with her purse.
Well, I don’t need to engage in
that routine, either.
