Tips for the Elderly

1. Cover up. You are old and your body is repulsive now. It may be in fine condition for someone your age, but the people who now make the world go around—the young—find it disgusting. Cover up as much as possible. Nothing sleeveless, no sandals, no shorts, loose fits, always. Your skin is horribly wrinkled and mottled. Scrotal. (You spent, cumulatively, months in the sun. On purpose. Idiot.) On the bright side of this, as grim death nears you are always cold, so covering your skin will help you stay warm. The Complete and Total Loser has been an ugly gimp since his early youth. He knows what of he speaks. The obese are more aesthetically pleasing to look at than you.

2. Don't grunt when you move. Virtually all movement causes you pain. That's understandable; you've been moving for decades, working hard, toiling away at some meaningless job to keep you alive and make the rich richer while raising children in a grossly overpopulated world, consuming as much as possible as you did. You have done what you were told to do. Being old, your mind isn't as sharp as it once was and your ideas are stale. People have to talk a little louder and more slowly than before and, being honest, they'd rather be elsewhere, doing something else. So when you move, don't grunt in pain. It makes you even less pleasant to be with than you already are.

3. Don't listen to your kids when they tell you not to drive anymore. Sure, there's a chance that you'll mistake the gas pedal and the brake, but the odds of you plowing into a group of school children as they wait for the bus are very small. It does happen, but just a few times a year. That's why you hear about it in the news. You're more likely to run into a neighbor's bush or hit something else and the only person hurt will be you. Besides, there are plenty of schoolkids.

4. Make your will specific. Remember that Civil War sword you promised to your middle son when he was seven? He still thinks he's getting that. So do you. But two weeks after your funeral, as your sons and daughter are rifling through your house your eldest son will pick it up and casually announce that he'll take it. This will bloom into conflict that will cause bad blood between him and the middle son, with others taking sides, that will last for years. One sentence in writing and it could've been avoided. One goddamn sentence.

5. Be careful about what you throw out. Those photographs from the '60s may be junky snapshots to you, but to your kids and grandchildren they're historical artifacts. People don't keep bad photographs anymore, they delete them from their camera memory cards without printing them. A shame. The bad pictures—the family portraits with one kid scowling at another, the father looking away from the lens (at what?), the dog's bright, pink erection—these photographs tell more than others. The only studio family portraits of any interest are those of families in which one member has murdered all the others.

6. Avoid falls. At some point, those close to you will want to see you die sooner rather than later and falls hasten the end. However, you are enough of a burden already and with the immobility that comes with a fall you will be even more of one, unless you have the resources to hire someone to help you. You may have wiped your children's asses when they were infants, but your revolting, shriveled anus is a far different matter.

7. Accept that your children don't like you now. You've been of no value to them for years and they look forward to your death, after which they will love you again. You're a diminished old thing but you're still capable of pushing their buttons and they hate you for that and they feel awful about hating you. They wish you had died years ago in a plane crash, asleep after a nice meal, on your way home from a pleasant vacation when the jet slams into a mountain. The only reason they value your continued existence is that it marks their own timeline. ("Mom and Dad both made it 90? Then I will too!") They think that when they're your age they won't be at all like you but will be dignified founts of wisdom and information. Ha!
8. Lie. When someone asks you how you are, don't make some "I'm-so-sick-sound" like "uhhheehhh!" Lie and say, "Fine, how are you?" It makes being around you easier to take.