Cantankerous Old Buttface

Being elderly is no excuse to be a bitch.

Now before you start to write angry e-mails, this is not a rant about the elderly. I love many elderly people, and feel that with their experience and wisdom they deserve respect from people which society seems to deny them far too often.

This post is about using your age as an excuse to be old sack of bitter and mean. The kind of people who turn on the sprinklers when the girl scouts approach their door wishing to unload cookie merchandise.

I was at a little pastry shop today trying to pick out a tasty little lunch (oh yeah, dessert for lunch, love that 20-something metabolism). I was going through the cases of nummy treats when a senior couple approached behind me; I hadn’t decided what I wanted so I offered for them to go ahead of me.

"You young people don’t know how to make a quick decision anyways," snapped the old lady.

"She’s old," I thought, "I’ll let it slide."

"Well, it’s my first time here, and I’m just seeing what they have first. There’s a lot to choose from."

"Get the sacher torte," she noted, not looking in my direction.

"Not sure if I’m really down for that for lunch." (I have to keep some kind of restraint, right?)

"You just don’t know what’s in it. I can tell. You’re too young to know anything about refined food like this."

"Excuse me?"

This was the wrong thing to say because at this point, apparently all of the meds wore off ans she showed her true inner sociopath "Oh just take a class and learn what a cake really is!"

Now in the many instances of stupid people I seem to magnetically attract, I think I hold my cool pretty well. I like to think I have good manners, and despite the demagoguery of politeness I try to embody, sometimes, well, even the best of us lose it.

"Excuse me but first, that’s a nice way to be polite after I let you ahead. Second, I can MAKE a torte! Third, just because I’m young doesn’t mean I’m an idiot or that you can talk to me that way."

She was taken aback. Apparently when she deals it out she’s used to people succumbing to her and her grandma status. She wasn’t used to back-sass. She soon recovered, "How dare you speak that way to me! I’M OLD!"

The entire restaurant just stopped and starred at her. And then at me. The person who had upset the little old lady.

I smiled and held back the idea of telling her to just buy her cake and to watch out in case someone drops a house on her. That and the image of slamming her face into the first cake I see danced in my head. Thank god for restraint.

While all of this was going her husband / man friend / croney / whatever just stood there and ignored this whole thing. Like it never happened.

She ordered her cake and took it home, attempting to burn me alive with a baleful stare. To which I simply smiled and waved as she left. Yay for passive aggressiveness.

So you’re old? Congratulations, in X amount of years on earth you didn’t die from disease, freak accident, or bad luck. Doesn’t mean that you can use your age to be a total cantankerous buttface. Maybe you do know more about food than me, there’s a good chance you do. But I guess no one will ever want to hear it from you with an attitude like that.

As I approached the counter, I watched her through the glass in the door as she took her cake and got in the car with her not-a-care companion.

"Jesus, I’m sorry. She’s always like that. She’s screamed at me more than once before," noted the girl behind the counter, a pallid and apologetic look upon her face.

"You mean she’s ALWAYS like that?"

"Yeah, even to the pastry chef when she tells him ‘How to do it right.’"

I left a big tip in the jar. Along with my condolences.