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The snoring thread prompted me to ask this question. OP refers to "old retired turds."
Why do so many people use disgusting fecal terms for Old people?They even say it about themselves. I've heard people in their 40's refer to themselves as "old farts."
Understand, it's not the crudeness of the terms that offends me. I laugh at a funny bathroom joke same as the next guy. What bugs me is the underlying sense that Old people are being compared, and comparing themselves, to bodily functions. No other group that I know of, does this.
I have also heard "old coot" and "old goat" which may have other meanings.
Mostly I hear "old fart", used by older folks themselves. Perhaps some of this was inspired by Katherine Hepburn in the film "On Golden Pond" where she calls her husband an "old poop".
Have also heard some parents refer to their kids as "little shyt" - so we are not alone!
The snoring thread prompted me to ask this question. OP refers to "old retired turds."
Why do so many people use disgusting fecal terms for Old people?They even say it about themselves. I've heard people in their 40's refer to themselves as "old farts."
Understand, it's not the crudeness of the terms that offends me. I laugh at a funny bathroom joke same as the next guy. What bugs me is the underlying sense that Old people are being compared, and comparing themselves, to bodily functions. No other group that I know of, does this.
I think it is a measure of the depth of fear of ageing. We all know where ageing ends, and that's what literally frightens the crap out of people. Thus, to be old is to be in the toilet.
When people in their forties use it about themselves, I don't feel they do really expect (or want) to be believed. It is a kind of ironical self-reference that everyone is expected to snort at....though it hints at the fear that is there.
We have been raised in a delusional society that has moved ageing from a demanding process of natural changes to a filthy and abominable evil, and now - judging from the desperate verbal contortions and many delusional threads on C-D, old age no longer really exists.
I find that, personally, someone calling someone older "young man" or "young lady" much more insulting.
That hasn't happened to me yet since I'm only 61 and look late like late 40s (which is the most common guesstimate made when someone who doesn't know me well finds out I'm retired) but it just grates on me.
When it happens, and it will, I imagine that I'll have to make a decision to just let it go or rip the person a new one.
Even in my youth I NEVER used rude terms like that.
The people who use those terms regarding the elderly are every bit as rude and disrespectful in other aspects of their life and they always will be.
Theres a line in a country song about that but since one of the ultra sensitive mods chose to delete one of my posts in another thread for "language" and all I did was use asterisks, I won't quote that line from a famous old country song
I don't think old people themselves mind as much as people who care about being politically correct, and they don't care about these terms at all. I've worked in ophthalmics/optometrics/optics for more than a decade, and my patients are mostly elderly. I love the job and enjoy hearing the stories my patients tell me. Yesterday I dispensed a new pair of glasses to a guy in his 70s. I asked him how he thought he looked. He said, "I look like an old man wearing glasses!"
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