Now That’s Entertainment

 

In the hardware store, the clerk asked, “Can I help you find anything?”

“How about my misspent youth,” my husband joked.

The clerk answered, “We keep that in the back, between world peace and winning lottery tickets.”

****

“My memory is gone, Esther, so I changed my password to ‘INCORRECT.’ That way, when I log in with the wrong password, the computer will tell me, ‘YOUR PASSWORD IS INCORRECT!'”

****

My wife said, “Whatcha doin’ today?”

I said, “Nothing.”

She said, “You did that yesterday.”

I said, “I wasn’t finished.”

Senior Citizens Texting

Senior citizens have taken to texting with gusto. They even have their own vocabulary:

BFF: Best Friend Fainted

BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth

CBM: Covered By Medicaid

FWB: Friend With Beta-Blocker

LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out

GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low

Make ‘Em Laugh

Three sisters, ages 92, 94 and 96, live in a house together. One night the 96 year old draws a bath. She puts one foot in and pauses. She yells down the stairs, “was I getting in or out of the bath?”

The 94 year old yells back, “I don’t know, I’ll come up and see.” She starts up the stairs and pauses. Then she yells out, “was I going up the stairs or down?”

The 92 year old is sitting at the kitchen table having tea and listening to her sisters. She shakes her head and says, “I sure hope I never get that forgetful.” She ‘knocks on wood’ for good measure and then replies, “I’ll come up and help both of you as soon as I see who’s at the door!”

Oldies But Goodies

Some hit songs of the 60’s and 70’s are being revised with new lyrics to accommodate the aging:

• Herman’s Hermits: Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got A Lovely Walker
• The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Hip?
• Bobby Darin: Splish, Splash, I Was Havin’ A Flash
• Ringo Starr: I Get By With A Little Help From Depends
• Roberta Flack: The First Time Ever I Forgot Your Face  
• Commodores: Once, Twice, Three Times To The Bathroom
• Leo Sayer: You Make Me Feel Like Napping

 

The New Normal

There’s nothing wrong with getting older. It’s almost as if the ‘over 65’ crowd is ‘the new normal.’ Aches and pains aside, more people than ever before are living into their eighties, their nineties and even living long enough to hear Willard Scott read their names (not as part of a memoriam but) on a Smuckers jar.

One noble aspect about aging is that it doesn’t discriminate – all races and genders, if they’re lucky, can be members of this inclusive club. The only rule is that you do it right… the living, that is, not the dying.

Old people are constantly portrayed as those suffering from incontinence, heart disease, arthritis and memory loss. They’re seen as cranky, unattractive, frail and forgetful. The fact of the matter is, today’s elders are actually computer literate, taking classes, starting new jobs and finding ways to improve their lives.

It’s no longer enough to just sit back and enjoy your retirement. You must keep an open mind and not be afraid to fail. You have to be open to discovery and appreciate life – especially knowing that your time may be limited.

Always remember this… You don’t get to choose how you’ll die but you sure can choose how you’ll live!

A Perfect Marriage

A man and a woman had been married for 60 years. They had shared everything. They had talked about everything. They had kept no secrets from each other, except that the little old woman had a shoebox in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about.

For all of these years, he had never thought about the box but, one day, the little old woman got sick and the doctor said she would not recover.

In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoebox and took it to his wife’s bedside.

She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found 2 crocheted dolls and a stack of money totalling $95,000.

He asked her about the contents. “When we were to be married, my grandmother told me the secret to a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll.”

The little old man was so moved he had to fight back the tears. Only 2 precious dolls were in the box. She had only been mad at him 2 times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with happiness.

“Honey,” he said, “that explains the dolls but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?”

“Oh,” she said, “that’s the money I made from selling the dolls!”*

*Author Unknown

Ways And Means

What’s the best way to make money after you retire? Well – you could take part in online surveys, you could sell digital photographs, you could trade items on eBay, you could teach an online course, you could write an ebook…

After I stop laughing, I have to remind myself that:

• My parents don’t own a computer
• My parents don’t know how to use a computer
• My parents can, therefore, do none of the above-mentioned

Okay, they can still invest their money the old-fashioned way and they could look through their old crap (sorry, stuff) and find out if any of it has any real value whatsoever.

Or… they can continue to complain about the rising cost of gasoline (they don’t own a car), keep cutting out coupons and only shop for sale items (whether or not they need them) and, like the rest of America, decide how the country ‘should’ be run – if they were actually in the driver’s seat!

State Of Mind

We spend countless hours on our looks and on our bodies – lotions, spas, gyms, power drinks – so why don’t we spend any time trying to improve our minds? Yes, we play games on our computers and do crossword puzzles and the like. But, since graduating from school (be it HS or college), we haven’t properly exercised our brains.

Try these experiments:

• Say the alphabet backwards
• Play the old car-trip game (by yourself) where you think of alphabetized foods you’d like to take on a picnic 
• Try to remember the names of all of your teachers by grade

How did you do? I was visiting my son some weeks ago and, all of a sudden, I remembered a name we had both drawn blanks on in a recent phone conversation. We laughed. But it just goes to show you… It’s easy to forget but it’s redemptive to remember!

Cheers And Jeers

Why don’t people smile anymore? Walk down any city street and this is what you’ll see:

• People arguing on their phones
• People frowning unhappily
• People rushing and bumping, unapologetically, into one another 

Why bother spending an hour in the morning, getting ready to go out into the world, only to scowl and rant and rave… who’s going to notice all the time you just spent primping?

Did you ever watch or hear someone yawn and (all of a sudden) you yawn, too? It’s oddly contagious. So why doesn’t one smile beget another? You smile if you hear a baby doing that ‘uncontrollable giggle’ thing or when you see ANY animal video on YouTube. But there don’t seem to be that many moments in our own lives where we just LAUGH.

Next time you have a soda or a milkshake, try blowing bubbles through the straw… We used to love doing that as children. Or spontaneously break into a happy dance for no particular reason. If someone happens to catch you, hopefully they’ll laugh along with you. If not, you just bought yourself a one-way ticket to the funny farm!