Friday 7 September 2012

The OAP of Today...

Last month the Tabloids and Broadsheets alike feasted on the suggestion from Parliament that OAP’s could be means-tested before being automatically given some benefits. Whilst newspapers speculated wildly and crucified the coalition I quite simply pondered on my experiences of OAP’s…..

Before I begin I must ascertain that I have nothing against our elder generation of pensioners, in-fact I carry the greatest respect for our elder, senior members of society. My mum is older than me and I quite like her so that proves my point. I have two incredible grandparents both in their 90’s, both still the life and soul of any family gathering and both still capable of making me laugh at the top of my lungs. Often this isn’t their intention though. My slight issue that I have isn’t really with the ‘fighting generation’, the generation that took us through two World Wars and years of struggle in the aftermath to give us a Great Britain to be proud of. Who stood tall with their chests stuck out, shoulders back and heads held high and maintained that wonderful stiff upper lip of unswerving dignity. The wonderful story tellers of yesteryear, the fabulous elder-folk oozing with wisdom and experience and those who gave us our today need not defend yourselves- this isn’t about you, I simply adore you.

My ‘beef’ is with the inbetweeners, the busybodies who think the world owes them something. In particular the ones who believe every young person is a yob, has no respect for anyone else, their property and is running this country into the ground. These people who demand respect but fail to give it to anyone else.

I witnessed a man (not a gentleman, I use that term only for those who display gentlemanly like qualities) whom I would approximate to be about 55 years old, middle class at a guess, walk straight into a teenage boy. He straight away straddled his extremely high horse and accused the boy of walking into him and having no manners,

“That’s the problem with the youth of today, they have absolutely no respect for their elders, you all need to learn some manners!”

Well judgemental Sir, I for one applaud you, well done you for managing to stay alive until you’ve reached the grand age of 50, why should this unsuspecting teenage walker respect you? What, you’ve managed to not die? Well done, now p**s off and go and judge someone else, somewhere else. I can pretty much say with confident conviction that if the young lad mentioned anything about ‘the barger’s’ age or mature standing then he’d most likely be accused of being ageist. Lose/lose situation just because he was young and battered with the ‘youth of today’ stick.

This is most probably the type of person who is least likely to adapt to change, unable to live alongside anyone slightly different to him. I imagine should a gay couple move in next door or someone with tattoos/different accent/children/cats/anything, he would most probably judge and curtain twitch and become obsessed about his awful neighbours before even saying hello. Yes Sir, great example of respecting your fellow human. My friend often falls victim to this sort of middle aged, middle classed-up-their-own-arse judgement.

She has the most wonderful tattoo’s covering quite a lot of her body and this is the first thing people take notice of, quite rightly, they’re spectacular, wonderfully artistic that was probably her aim when she started decorating herself. These inbetweeners however, seem to think she’s a crazed criminal not to be associated with and for god sake watch your handbag dear! She hold’s doors open for people in shopping centre’s/supermarket/fluffy kitten centre for abused fluffy kittens and in return she gets glared at and given filthy looks. She is a wonderful mother, loving wife and war veteran and a great example of human benevolence. She is more than capable of living alongside other people whether they be old, young, gay, Polish and she does it without too much of an effort.

So, artistic charismatic individuals, people with funny accents, the gays and ‘the youth of today’, keep your heads held high, continue to walk with pride because the narrow-minded, self important middle class buffoons need not matter, for if the ‘important’ members of society are unable to live alongside you then that’s their problem. And ‘the youth of today’ enjoy your youth as one day you will be running the country, keeping us alive, engineering engineer-y things, sending people to Venus and finding a cure for middle classed, judgemental whinging old bats.

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