Getting your driver’s license at 16. The right to vote at 18. Your first legal beer at 21. These are important mile markers. This weekend, I must have made a wrong turn because suddenly I found myself at a mile marker near the end of the road. I was asked, “Would you like the senior discount?” Considering I’m only 46 years old, answering the question invited some philosophical rumination. First, would it be ethical to say yes and get a discount reserved for people a generation older than I? And second, would a jury find extenuating circumstances if I beat the questioner senseless for assuming I was closer to my father’s age than my own?
In all fairness to the clerk, a very young person, who won’t be hearing the senior discount question for another half a century, I have always looked a little older than I am. My hair started turning gray in earnest around 28, and now the salt outnumbers the pepper by about 10 to 1. On good days, though, people tell me I look like the actor Richard Gere. I wonder if they mean I look like I could be his dad.
Anyhow, I was telling this story to a really young-looking female friend named Jonnie when she interrupted me to tell me about her own traumatic encounter with old age. The question was popped to her in a grocery checkout line during rush hour. There were at least 10 people behind her. Jonnie isn’t prone to philosophical rumination. She screamed at the cashier, “What about me looks 65? Tell me and I’ll have it fixed.” While the cashier struggled to answer, Jonnie began to question the people in line behind her, posing the same question to each of them. All commerce stopped. The aging process itself stood still. Patrons over 40 were extremely sympathetic. One gentleman tried to hit on her. Finally, a cashier who had passed more mile markers than the cashier in Jonnie’s line came over to apologize and offered Jonnie a gift card after charging her full price because, no, Jonnie didn’t want the senior discount.
It has been a month, and Jonnie still is traumatized. She finds herself confronting strangers on the street with the words, “What about me looks 65? Tell me and I’ll have it fixed.” Just so you know, Jonnie is no superficial Cosmo-reading bimbo. She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology. She knows the societal forces that make American women so afraid of appearing old. The stakes are real in a way they aren’t for men.
She’s right. Within a few hours of my confrontation, I was joking about it. After talking to Jonnie, though, I’ve decided to perform a public service on behalf of my friends in the other gender. I’ve developed some guidelines for sales clerks.
Rule 1: Never ask a woman in America if she wants the senior discount. If you estimate her age to be 107, don’t ask. If she’s wearing a button that says, “Willard Scott wished me Happy Birthday,” don’t ask. If she tells you, “Today is my 100th birthday,” don’t ask. If she is your grandmother, and you absolutely, positively know she’s over 65, don’t ask.
There is no Rule 2.
