OLD AGE SUCKS
         LIKE MARSH MUD AT LOW TIDE
               and other deep thoughts
                                   by
                        Katharine  Folkes
 
            I am into analogies, as you can see.  When you write for kids, which I do most days, editors want original analogies.  I spend a good part of each day trying to come up with some.  If I said, for instance, “her face was as red as Rudolph’s nose,” my manuscript would be in the just-out-of-college-editor’s trash in a nano-second.  Sometimes I get carried away trying to be clever:  “Her face was as red as the veins in the town drunk’s eyes.”  Hey!  That’s pretty good.  Not for kids, though.

            So.  Marsh mud and old age.  Original and accurate analogy.  In my younger days my sister and I used to water ski in the back waters at St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, and believe me, marsh mud sucks.  Like old age. I think I’ve said that already.  I think I repeat a lot these days.  And those days.

                    OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF MOMS

            Ancientness really should have some benefits. You’d think that being able to impart your hard-earned knowledge and wisdom to your grandchildren would be one.  Forget your own offspring. But the kids today have had so much self-esteem poured down their throats they think they’re much smarter than anyone else, especially us older folks.  So, you might as well save your breath.  However… I keep trying.  And I have realized two things: when I open my mouth, my mother emerges, and it makes me laugh.

I've forgotten the second thing.  

            I find myself quoting Mom more and more because my granddaughter, Annie, has become a teenager.  And as sweet and precious as she is, Annie is also a self-proclaimed fount of knowledge and never wrong.   And I mean never!  The other day she spouted off some nonsense and I said, “Not one iota of what you just said is true!” (My mother was fond of saying, “not one iota”)  And Annie laughed!  Laughed!  Now everything is “one iota.”  When I call her to supper she hollers, “In one iota.”  She can be funny and I love her to pieces, but she does turn a deaf ear to my advice. 

            I wonder if kids will ever learn from their elders.  You’d think they’d like to have a little one-upmanship, a little prior warning about certain bad situations.  Of course, I didn’t listen either, and I’ve made mistakes that could probably have been avoided if I had.   I know kids learn from mistakes, but I still think it would be beneficial to miss a few and grow old without as many regrets.

            I have to say, today’s kids are smart (except for the ones who are interviewed on the street and know absolutely nothing) and it’s hard to argue with them.  They know a lot, have been exposed to a lot, and Lord knows their lasting power is light years longer than mine.  Even so, I’ve been trying to get across to Annie that though things have changed tremendously since I was her age (understatement of the year), some things never change!  Mainly teenage boys, or boys, period.  She is not naïve, but sometimes she wears these little shirts that say things like “come hither.”  She says she just thinks it’s poetic and funky. Of course, I’d rather it said, “watch it, bud!”