The Goat Vs the Elderly

I always find other peoples perceptions to be quite funny. One perception that particularly confuses me is the common views of old people.

From my perspective, it seems they get a pretty free ride in society. Concession cards that give them cheap travel. Pensions if they have squandered their savings. Cheap medicine, cheap doctors, cheap everything. But every time you point this out to someone, they say, "Hey, they deserve it". My answer, "Why".

As far as I am concerned, the elderly are the leeches of society. They take up the hospital beds; they are a menace on our roads. They seem to believe that they are God’s gift to the world, worthy of political handouts and tax cuts. These old people live in their million dollar houses yet write letters to the editor saying raise pensions should be raised because they are cash poor.

But for mine, the dream is over. I have seen through the looking glass and will not be deceived.

I have seen the elderly do hundreds of things wrong. One of my pet hates is they fact that they don’t cross at the lights. I’ve seen an old guy who could barely walk cross the Pacific Highway almost causing accidents as cars serve to miss the old bugger. I’ve seen an old woman shoplift apples from a fruit store.

And yet still we try to help them, the goat included. I’ve tried to help an old guy get his trolley over the curb only to see the guy turn on me and gave me verbal abuse. Just say "thank you" you old codger.

To be fair there are a lot of elderly people (maybe even the majority) who are worthy of our love and affection. Who give their time to help their families and society. But lets not sugar coat it. Like every other segment of society there are nice old people, but there are an awful lot of dodgy ones as well. I’ve decided that not every old woman is your nana. Not every old guy is a digger who fought in the war.

Some of them are just pests who have survived.

Let the free ride end.