A young man was walking out of the library as I was walking
in. He grinned and said, “Hey, old
man. Good morning!”
I liked that. I liked
it then, and I like it now. He made an
honest call. If it walks like an old man
and looks like an old man and acts like an old man, call it what it is.
And he needed more than a little nerve to use the term old man on someone he didn’t know in a
society that shuns talk of growing old by hiding behind the euphemism senior citizen.
Not only is senior
citizen a euphemism, it lacks punch.
Ernest Hemingway would have fallen by the wayside if he’d called his
masterpiece The Senior Citizen and the
Sea. And my mother’s favorite insult—
“the old fool”—becomes worthless as the “senior citizen fool.”
The term came to life in 1938 when a Time magazine writer said a California politician “had an
inspiration to do something on behalf of what he calls, for campaign purposes,
'our senior citizens.'” For campaign
purposes there was a lot of pandering for the old folks’ votes in those days
since Social Security benefits, implemented in 1935, proved to be so popular. (For comments on senior citizen and a lot of other topics see Barry Popik’s The Big
Apple, at http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/senior_citizen
)
It’s possible that euphemisms breed more euphemisms. A restaurant I eat at doesn’t use the words
“senior citizen discount” on its menu but does offer special deals on a page
titled, “For Our Honored Guests over 55.”
What garbage. I’m not
a guest of a restaurant but a customer, and I haven’t done anything to warrant
being honored.
If you haven’t guessed by now, I like plain, honest
language. Forget about me being a senior
citizen. Just call me old man.
***
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