Saturday, February 17, 2007

I Got Old; I Didn't Get Dumb!

Do young folk really believe that when grey hairs start sprouting from your head that the grey cells simultaneously fall out the back of your head, following you around like a bad case of dandruff?

The other day I was in the electronics department of Target, wanting to purchase a 5-disc changer. I said to the young man behind the counter, "Please, sir, can you please direct
me to the 5-disc changers?"

"Certainly, ma'm," he said cheerfully and led me to an impresssive display of...well, boom boxes. "Here you go."

"But these are boom boxes," I said. "I want a 5-disc changer."

"They're the same thing. Just different names. Maybe you called them 5-disc changers when you were younger."

"When I was younger, I didn't call them anything, because they hadn't been invented!"

"They've been around forever. You probably just weren't familiar with them."

"Au contraire, mon ami," I said. "In the whole history of the world a boom box and a 5-disc changer have never, ever been considered the same thing." I could feel the volume of my voice increasing and developing that strident quality that sends neighborhood dogs fleeing. "That's as stupid as saying an electric can opener and a Mixmaster are one and the same thing." I do believe I was pretty much shrieking at this point.

"M'am, you need to calm down." I think until this point he thought he was just dealing with a harmless little old lady.

"And you need to stop being such a patronizing, uninformed jackass. I'm taking my business to Circuit City. The folks over there are bright enough to know the difference between a boom box and a 5-disc changer." With that I thwomped him over the head with my walker.

I hope he's learned that harmless little old ladies can turn turn into crazy old ladies with anger management problems in a New York minute.

6 comments:

OldBagNewTricks said...

Hah! LOL -- This is precisely why I stopped shopping -- all this expendable middle-aged income and no where to go. Internet shopping showed up just in time.

Too funny,
Jenny

Francie...The Scented Cottage Studio said...

Thanks for the laugh. On behalf of other little old ladies everywhere I thank you. It gets old being patronized by young pups without enough sense to realize they don't know it all. I usually smile very sweetly and patronize the hell out of them....oops, can I say hell here?

Vallen said...

Education being what it is these days, it probably would be really fun and really easy to be the patronizer. They wouldn't know what hit them.

ccwriter said...

Good grief and LOL!! If the guy in the store thinks a boom box and a 5-disk changer are the same thing, they must get an awful lot of returned items!

ccwriter said...

Good grief and LOL!! If the guy in the store thinks a boom box and a 5-disk changer are the same thing, they must get an awful lot of returned items!

Sonia said...

Oh, My!!...thats so funny...makes you think what planet is this guy living on....He should know better being hes working in the "electronics" section.