Today I’m starting a new category: The Geezer Files. Notes on oldness, a term preferable to “aging” or worse, “aged”. Here are a few starters—-
Guys in oldness like telling jokes particularly to kids. Bad jokes. Because the little characters will laugh anyway. In one of my fifty-four jobs, I worked with a nursing home patient who was considerably brain damaged. He coped by telling jokes. The clinical term is “witzelsucht,” combining the German words for joke + telling. Yes it is a malady but the term is interesting and so was the old geezer who told the bad jokes. Bad, yes, but he enjoyed telling them and I enjoyed listening.
Another geezer-word is the Japanese word for a pun. A pun in Japanese is “oyajigyagu”, or “old guy gag” or so I’m told. I love puns, so that tells my age.
And no joke from the Japanese again. One might hope in the time of oldness, one might gain the wisdom of “wabisabi” an acceptance of the beauty and transience of the world.
Two Strikes 