How to know you are growing old

Your children sometimes find you sitting alone in the sitting room, in the dark, just thinking

  1. You cannot stand teenagers and people in their early 20s, with their half-shaven heads, unkempt appearance and inability to communicate in complete words and sentences.
  2. Anyone who texts you in abbreviations has promptly been blocked or deleted from your contacts list.
  3. You have accepted that there are people you thoroughly, actively dislike; and what’s more, now you know that there is no rule saying you have to talk to them or spend any time whatsoever with them.
  4. The last time you went to a nightclub was not in this decade.
  5. When travelling by public means: You tell people off for littering; You have been known to shut down preachers when you disagree with them theologically;
    You open the windows and remind people that it is important to avoid Tuberculosis.
  6. The unruly neighbourhood children avoid you because they can remember the last time you had ‘a word’ with their parents concerning their behaviour.
  7. You switch your phone off immediately you get home because people are exhausting.
  8. You have stopped pretending you will ever read Shakespeare’s plays, or any plays, for that matter, because you simply cannot stand them. For the same reason, you have never attempted to read the King James Version of the Bible.
  9. You no longer attend weddings or functions where there is no guarantee of a clean toilet. Life is too short to spend treating urinary tract infections.
  10. Your children sometimes find you sitting alone in the sitting room, in the dark, just thinking.
  11. You attend the earliest service at church, because you no longer have the energy or will to enthusiastically greet 10,000 people before you sit down.
  12. You changed churches a long time ago because you got tired of that hyper-manic pastor who was always demanding that you greet your neighbour and ask what they had for breakfast, as if you were their nutritionist.
  13. You faithfully read the newspaper, much to the shock of everyone around you who keeps exclaiming ‘but the world has gone digital!’
    Can you wrap meat or kill a fly with a digital paper, eh?!
    Here is a toast to you, dear ageing reader. Cheers!

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