Me in my early 20's
When I was young and knew nothing, I had scores of people clamoring for my opinions, my friendship, and my heart, especially when I was a young, fairly pretty screenwriter, selling my work to a major Hollywood studio. But now, despite years of experience, education, adventures and wisdom, I am fighting a general tendency of others to treat me as if I am a dunce or a mental patient, simply because I have reached a certain age. Being poor, disabled and needy probably has something to do with my sudden status as an imbecile. Too often, I am the recipient of the unwarranted rolled eyeballs. You know what I am talking about.
I am aware that, in the spiritual realm, this treatment is supposed to be good for me, and I try to bow my head to it as much as possible, but it goes against the grain, having been an entirely independent woman from the age of 17, when I walked out of my natal home with nothing but the clothes on my back and South Indian hippie purse that contained little more than a hair brush and some lipstick. It is my life experiences that have taught me to speak out against injustice and prejudice, otherwise the next gal will get an even worse time of it. I owe it to her to put the brakes on, if only just a little bit.
In the wake of the Trump era, I have experienced incidents of discrimination having to do with my disabilities, which is made worse by ageism and fat prejudice. You may remember that grocery clerk at the Smiths store who told me that he believes in "Trump's law" (whatever THAT was) and that, unless I have had "two arms cut off or two legs cut off," I am not really disabled and don't deserve to park in the handicap parking, despite being actually disabled and having a legitimate, state-issued parking placard.
Many people in our culture are making these decisions about the worthiness of others, based only on what a cursory glance tells them.
Last Friday, I had a horrible experience with a passport agent at the post office who was unreasonably nasty, personally offensive, and condescending to me in a way that I never experienced before the addition of wheels to my life; wheels on my walker, wheels on my electric scooter, and wheels on a car I cannot live without because walking has become impossible. I had nightmares for two days afterwards.
Today, I endured the sneers, rolling eyeballs and tsk tsking of fellow shoppers at Whole Foods, as I tried to maneuver down the aisles in the electric cart that is far too big, the dimensions of which were blatantly ignored when the clerks placed their food displays in the narrow corridors. One woman was so keen to circumvent my little parade, she pushed her cart with great force from the checkout line to the far wall. It neatly clipped my shuddering vehicle. She glared at me, as if it was MY bright idea to send a grocery cart careening across the waxed floors, unmanned.
When my groceries were finally rung up, I discovered, to my utter chagrin, that I'd left my debit card in my other purse, something I have never done in my life, and thereby earned a withering glance from the cashier. It was then that I learned that Whole Foods does not take checks and, though owned by Amazon, has no method of getting payment from you if you leave your card at home. It's cash or plastic, and that's it. I seem to remember it being very easy to read someone's check, in day's gone by, but apparently, that is too simple. The cashier was completely devoid of empathy. He said he could put the groceries aside for me to pick them up later or they could put them all away. He and the packing clerk exchanged ugly glances.
One of the reasons that my apartment is not suited to my needs is that I live in a food desert. There is one very small neighborhood market with highly suspect, extremely expensive fruits and vegetables. Expiration dates are very near or actually expired and I suspect that the storage in the back room is not air conditioned properly because the fruits and vegetables wilt within a day of buying them. ALL of the grocery stores that carry healthy foods are MILES away from where I live, and shopping trips are very hard on me. I was a long way from home, with no debit card. I just couldn't come back.
I couldn't see myself driving 20 minutes home to get my card, 20 minutes back to the store, 20 minutes home again. I could not do that extra hour and also put away groceries that would be half ruined from sitting out for so long. I opted to have them put it all away. Neither the cashier nor the packer uttered a single kind word. I don't know why I was apologizing, but I did - probably because they were making it clear that I had wasted their very precious time. I received no sympathy or fellow feeling or recognition that I was still a customer. No. Just those ugly glances.
I was in so much pain by this point that I was unable to walk, and when I tried to take the electric cart to my car, the stupid "sensors" did not want to let me through the door - not because you're not allowed to take the carts to your car, but because the sensors have been installed so that you won't run into the towers of groceries that I previously mentioned were placed in the aisles of the store. As I worked furiously to try to get the cart to go through the exit doors, an indignant man stood inches from me, his face black with rage. I was inconveniencing him. There was another exit door a few feet away. He could have used that, but no, he wanted to make it clear to me just how mad he was that I dared to interrupt his flow through life. If I had been my former 21 year-old self, he would have been falling all over himself to help the pretty young disabled lady, I would bet. I finally got out the door and drove home wondering what the hell I was going to eat, since my cupboards were bare and I was hungry.
This hostility toward older and disabled people is really disturbing. It wasn't until I'd read a sullen and resentful diatribe against "boomers" written by a Facebook connection, that I began to comprehend the strong sentiment that is being generated by our progeny and their kids. They blame all of us that were born during certain years for somehow not leaving them a nice enough world to live in, completely missing the fact that only the very wealthy among our generation had any realistic power in which to operate, and the comparative ease of the older boomer's lives was dictated by economic factors that no longer exist.
As in all ages, it is the people who have money who hold the power in the society. The rest of us just scramble to hold onto the edge of the bowl so we don't fall in. As much as I tried to educate my Facebook acquaintance about this reality, her hostility and bitterness toward all people in that generation came gushing from her in a torrent of resentful words, and I had to walk away from the negativity.
I am having a curious ride, between the ageism and the sexism and the disability prejudice and the fat shaming and the misogyny. Being a member of several vulnerable groups can be exhausting. Of course, people of color are the experts on this sort of thing, as the prejudice that is thrown at them constantly is often life threatening. At least no one has made a move to kill me when I got in their way in the grocery store.
Recently, a member of my former parish started circulating an anti-boomer meme that was couched in the form of a comic cartoon. It was really only a pretense of humor. It was bitingly mean and the kind of thing that has a corrosive effect on society, if left unchallenged. When I explained to him that it was insulting and inappropriate, he coolly told me it was a joke and that he found it funny. I tried to reason with him, but his smugness let me know that he considered this particular prejudice to be okay to cultivate and it didn't bother him if anyone was hurt by it.
I found it an odd attitude for a well-churched young man to take. Frankly, I had expected better from him, given his education, but one can't force enlightenment on anyone. Ageism is wide spread in America. I have heard that this is less of a problem in other cultures where they revere their elders and treat them with respect, but here in the U.S., many take it for granted, assuming their prejudice has some basis in fact.
The baby boomers aren't the first generation to experience discrimination. I remember when my father hit his 40's and he was constantly telling me of the ageism that he was experiencing. He began to have trouble finding work. People dismissed him as an old hack. I discounted his constant carping and assumed that he had earned this treatment because he really did have an unpleasant personality, with no appreciation for social norms. Clearly, I was missing some information that only experience could provide.
The prejudices expressed by those entitled young people on Facebook aren't even logical. The fact of the matter is that each generation contains all sorts of people. Some are selfish and couldn't care less about the kind of world they leave to their children and grandchildren. Some spend all their time and money on worthy causes. Some are in their own world and live for whatever hobby horse has captured their imagination. Many people - perhaps most people - just struggle to stay ahead of the daily grind.
Wages for the middle class stalled from 1970 to 2005, basically the baby boomer working years. At the same time, however, corporate profits and CEO wealth skyrocketed. Whatever value the baby boomer created by her effort benefited only the company and the executives, leaving her desperate to feed her kids and stay ahead of the repair bills on the car, which is probably why her kids resent her so much. Mom was always working. If she wasn't at her full time job, she left the kids alone in the apartment at night and on weekends while she worked her side hustle.
The kids are blaming their boomer mom for leaving them to their own devices much of the time, but it's an unfair complaint. Life got harder and harder during those working years, from 1970 to 2005. From my personal perspective, I ended up making less money in real dollars in my 40's than I had in my 20's. The economic machine was sending all the value of my work to the bank accounts of a few people at the top of the pyramid, leaving me scrabbling for table scraps that fell from above. Who can build a world for the next generation when you're survival is at stake? It is a rigged system. This is the fault of capitalism, which MUST be regulated, or it naturally results in all the money being concentrated at the top, shared with just a few people.
Older people can be repositories of great wisdom, information and inspiration. That isn't true of all elderly people, of course. You know the saying, "with age comes wisdom, but sometimes it comes alone!" To pretend that every gray haired granny is a wizened old sage would be just another type of irrational prejudice. One must recognize, though, that the wisdom of many years is certainly a latent possibility in every person of a certain age. By very definition, they have more years of experiences than the young and, even if they DO start to become a little addled, don't they deserve simple human kindness? Jesus would say so.
It would be wonderful to think that writing a blog would disabuse scores of people of the notion that older people are all losing their minds and have nothing to offer the world. I don't have a prayer of changing the entire culture, but I will do my bit here. I am the perennial advocate for the misunderstood and maligned.
If you consider yourself a spiritual person, a religious person, or a person of honor and integrity, then you must agree that prejudice is evil. Condemning someone or ridiculing anyone, based solely upon some general group to which they belong, is an injustice to that person and shouldn't be tolerated. Pretending that comical character assassinations are benign is, likewise, dishonest. Don't encourage the incorrigible by laughing and then passing on the sentiment!
Jesus clearly wanted us to be kind to one another, and that doesn't include expressing contempt toward your elders in the mistaken idea that they are somehow less than you and that therefore it is alright to be prejudiced about anyone over the age of 40. There is no prejudice that is "allowed" or is culturally acceptable. Just stop it!
My postal carrier commiserated with me today, making the observation that, "it's a very strange time in America. People are so MEAN." This is true, but we have to fight this tendency as hard as we can. This meanness is not a holy stance to take, and it is incumbent upon Christians to follow the commandments of the Lord to the best of our abilities - and that means that we are to love everyone.
Read the Beatitudes again. That's a good place to start.
God bless us all.
Silver "Rose" Parnell
"Sannyasini Kaliprana"
