Tag Archives: senior citizens

A Heartfelt Plea

Posted on by under Environmental Issues, Global Issues, Personal, Social commentary

Remember when you were 15 or 16 and you’d just gotten your driver’s license?  Remember the first time you took the car out without one of your parents being with you?  You may or may not have been nervous, but your parents were scared half to death!  We knew all the risks, all the things that could happen, but … you had to grow, you needed your autonomy … so we bit our tongues, worried ‘til we saw the headlights when you came home later, and let you fly free (relatively).  We trusted you (mostly) to make wise decisions, to do the right thing.

Now, we are asking the same of you.  We are asking you to respect our autonomy, our ability to make our own wise decisions.  While we know you love us, know you will worry, we need to decide for ourselves during these dangerous times what level of risk is acceptable.  Think about it for a moment … we all risk our lives multiple times every day from the time we get out of bed.  We could fall down the stairs, could have a heart attack or stroke without warning, could get hit by a truck on our way to the grocery, and the list is endless.

Yes, the coronavirus pandemic is dangerous, and I do not minimize that.  But I would like to give you something else to think about.  Older people, especially those who live alone, are prone to loneliness and depression.  We worked hard all our lives, had friends we socialized with, had … purpose.  And now, suddenly, you are telling us that you want us to stay confined to quarters.  Some may be satisfied with this arrangement, but I think most of us are not.

One thing I’d like you to remember is that our emotional health is every bit as important as our physical health, and in fact one almost always affects the other.  We greatly appreciate your offer to do our grocery shopping for us, but … we like to select our own celery and chicken legs.  Some of us thrive on that briefly exchanged smile with the man stocking the apples, and the short, “Hey, how ya doin’?”  We don’t just like that … we need it.

There is a difference between being alive and living.  After all these years of hard work, of raising our families, we feel that if there is no joy in life, then … why bother?  We feel we’ve earned the right to be respected, to be trusted to make our own decisions, and it is deeply disturbing when we are told what we must do, no matter how well-meaning the intent is.

The reality is that nobody knows how long the threat of the coronavirus will last.  I’ve heard that it might be August, I’ve even heard that it could last into next year.  Now, if you tell us that we must stay in our homes for 2-3 weeks, that’s one thing.  But you can’t do that, for you just don’t know how long it may be.  Keep in mind that our days are numbered anyway, that some of us wake every morning and say, “Wow … another one?”  Most of us don’t expect nor desire to live to 100.  Yes, we know you’d like to keep us around that long, but really, once we aren’t living our lives, but merely existing, then … why bother?

My own daughter and I had this conversation many years ago, under similar but different circumstances, and while I’m sure she sometimes bites her tongue, she does understand and respects my autonomy.  But I have seen too many friends these past two weeks having their autonomy, their joy taken from them by those who would wrap them into a plastic bubble to preserve their health … at the cost of their emotional well-being.

We’re not asking to go run a marathon, or snuggle up with a group of 100 people — we’re only asking that you let us live — take a walk, go to the grocery store, maybe even visit the library or bookshop (if they’re even open), or visit a neighbor for a cuppa coffee.  By all means, if you hear me say I’m going to go skydiving, though, please feel free to stop me!  But seriously, we’ve lost so much of our ability already to do things we enjoy — we are hampered by arthritis and other physical limitations — don’t take any more away from us.

Most of us will likely survive this, but I’m not sure what sort of world we’ll step back into at the end of the day.  I just read something a friend sent where scientists are predicting it could last up to 18 months.  Will there be a world left to come out into?  How many decades will it take to rebuild global economies?  I don’t know … nobody knows.  I only know that today I am alive, and I wish to live my life … not as others dictate, but in the manner that I see fit. I’ve earned that right. I know you all have the best of intentions and what you do is done out of love … please love us enough to let us decide how we will live these next days/weeks/months. Thank you.

Spammers and Hackers and Crooks … OH NO!

Posted on by under Rants, Social commentary

To every spammer/hacker who continues filling my email box with obnoxious, annoying and offensive email, one word:  STOP!  CEASE!!  DESIST!!!  Oops … that’s three words, isn’t it?  Well, pick one and heed it.

So far, in just the past two days, I have been contacted 13 times by the FBI (bet you didn’t know about my past … shall we say, indiscretions, did you?).  I have also received multiple offers from well-meaning individuals who want to “enhance” body parts that I do not have, have never had, and am not likely to ever possess in this lifetime.  PayPal has “suspended” my account 7 times, but the good news is that I only need to provide them with my password in order to rectify this problem.  Chase Bank has “detected a problem” with my account, an account that I didn’t even know I had!  It has been determined that I am the sole beneficiary of some dude I never heard of and there is a check for $7,000,000 (that’s right, 7 million dollars) just waiting to be deposited in my bank account as soon as I send them the account number and password!  Oh, and let us not forget the Nigerian prince who wants me to help him transfer his fabulous wealth safely to the United States!  And it goes on and on and on.  I laugh, but the sad part of this is that an estimated 12% of people still fall for these things.  As opposed to the old days of “junk mail” where the crook had to actually pay for paper, envelope and postage, spam costs almost nothing to send.  If only 1% fall for it, the spammer is still making a substantial profit.  I don’t have data to back it up, but it is my belief that the majority of the victims of this crime are the elderly or the poor and under-educated.

My spam filter is excellent at capturing these emails, but sadly it also, on occasion, captures a valid message that isn’t trash, so daily I have to take a quick glance through my spam folder.  I am not really easily offended.  Just in the last week, in response to a New York Times Op-Ed, I was called a “dumbass” and also told by another that he hoped I soon met my death via an episode of gun violence.  Neither of those comments offended me, but merely earned a chuckle and re-enforced my thoughts that many people are not too bright.  Point here being that I am not easily offended.  I am, however, offended by the extremely vulgar and graphic words in the subject line, words that I have never uttered in sixty-five years on this planet.  I’m no saint, and I say “damn” and even use the “f-word” when I think the occasion calls for it, but the spammers apparently think it is cute to go way beyond that, and yes, I am offended.  I have no minor child in the house, but many people do, and I would bet the bank that many of those children occasionally “accidentally” tap into mom’s or dad’s email account.  And yet, the right to send this vulgar trash is protected under the First Amendment?  I don’t think so.  I think that George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and the rest would be appalled at this abuse and misuse of the First Amendment.

That said, what I find myself most offended by is the sheer waste.  Obviously some people have the intelligence to figure out how to hack into people’s email accounts, how to send out mass mailings, and how to extract hard-earned monies from trusting, unsuspecting innocent citizens.  What offends me, you ask?  What offends me is that with all the troubles in the world today, why should everybody have to be on their toes every minute of every day, never able to trust or believe that an email is actually what it purports to be, never able to simply respond.  What offends me is that I have to change my password every month and have 15,000 security questions to get on every website I regularly visit.  What offends me is that these presumably intelligent people could be contributing to making the world a better place, but instead they have chosen to use their techo-savvy to make it an uglier, darker place.  Instead of helping develop a cure for cancer, they prefer to find ways to convince people to give them their social security number.  Instead of defending wrongfully convicted citizens and helping serve the cause of justice, they prefer to bilk elderly people of their life savings.  And the list goes on.

Sadly, there is no way to halt the spamming and hacking and it is destined to become more prevalent as the 21st century progresses.  Any attempt to respond to a spam-mail will only result in an exponential increase of more of the same.  As a long-time student of Constitutional Law, I fully support the Constitution, but I am not a textualist and I firmly believe that this is not at all what the Founding Fathers intended when they drafted the Bill of Rights.  We need to curtail people’s “rights” to tread on our own rights.  Now, to end where I began:  Spammers, GET OUT OF MY LIFE AND STOP, CEASE AND DESIST SENDING ME MESSAGES!!!