When I Am Old, I Shall Be Kooky

Do you ever wonder what you'll be like when you're old? Will I be one of those kooky old people that everyone loves to hang around just to see what I'll say? Or will I be one of those kooky old people that everyone tries to avoid just because of what I'll say? Either way, one truth remains: I will be a kooky old woman. We ALL become kooky old women. Except for the men, of course... and you all become kooky old men. I see hundreds of old people every day around town and especially at work. Some are fun, loud and opinionated. Some are withdrawn and grumpy, lamenting the fading of the life they used to know. But with each year, all old people are brought together by a singular uniting force: kookiness.

The problem is, as we get older, the things we think are hip and cool become increasingly out-of-date. Someday, Emo will be Old School and our grandchildren will mock their parents for their sad, greasy hair and guyliner. Even for the unique few who hold on to the present and stay current with the times... their shocking hip-ness has an element of kookiness all it's own. Everybody loves the great-grandma who is down with all the current trends. It's kooky!

It isn't just the trends that make us kooky old people... it's also layers and layers of personality. As we grow old, we cling to things that comfort us, that remind us of how things used to be. We also develop habits that shape and define our later years. Think of the lady with too much mis-matched jewelry scattered across every gildable surface on her body. Think of the old man who starts his day every day with the paper and his danish, and polishes his now-classic car every Saturday morning at exactly 8 am. When you're old, you can go on vacation with your identification in a lanyard around your neck because your pocket is too far away. When you're old you can demand that people bring you things... not because your back gave out, but because you're old and people will just do it. When you're old you can play canasta and shuffleboard and eat dinner at 4 p.m. Kooky? Sure! But that's the fun of getting old. You can get away with things you never would have tried when you were young... you can have annoying, compulsive habits and people will just say, "that kooky old lady...", and you're off scott-free!

There's a poem called "When I am Old I Shall Wear Purple" by Jenny Jacobs. The poem so perfectly describes old-lady kookiness that it launched a worldwide sisterhood of kooky old women! It even gave them a uniform, God bless 'em, of things that only kooky old women would be kooky enough to wear..an army of purple-clad bitties with their overstated red hats, violet feathers included! Basically, the poem is the battle cry of the senior citizen who decides just not to give a rip what people think!

It just makes me wonder... how much better would our lives be if we could just do a little more of what we want and a little less of what we ought? What if we put less weight on what others think and just allowed ourselves to get a little, well... kooky? Just don't wear red and purple together. That's not kooky. That's tacky.



When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.