When I was a student I wrote a sketch about an old man who refused to breathe out because he was too mean to give his carbon dioxide to plants for nothing. I believe the sketch ended with the unexpected turnaround that the plant he was trying to kill had also been "holding its breath" and not giving out oxygen and the old man was killed. Most amusing I am sure you will agree.
The man's wife left the skit saying something along the lines of "Me and Enid are just off down to the town centre where we're going to walk very slowly and get in young people's way."
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With youthful disrespect I was satirising the meanness of the elderly, implying that they acted in this obstructive way on purpose and got some tiny satisfaction out of it.
Although the vast majority of the aged are wonderful and thoughtful people whose many years on this earth have brought them wisdom, there are a minority of them who do seem to get their kicks out of slightly inconveniencing other people.
I encountered one of these in Tescos today. She was in front of me and another lady in the queue and as her shopping went through she was packing it very carefully, very slowly. Now once all the groceries had been checked through the scanner, any normal person, who cared about their fellow shoppers would stop packing their groceries, proffer their credit card, cheque or money, and whilst the transaction was being processed would finish putting the shopping away.
An old person with all their experience of the world should know this better than any of us.
Instead this old lady very deliberately slowed down with her packing and allowed the check-out lady to wait and wait until all her old lady goods were safely ensconced in plastic.
Then she slowly got out her cheque book and slowed down a bit to carefully tear off a cheque.
The whole process took about four minutes longer than it needed to and all the time the old lady would shoot back the odd self-satisfied glance as she appreciated the seconds of our lives that she was wasting.
One would hope that getting older would make us less, not more petty, that we would realise the value of thinking of others, instead of acting like some kind of geriatric and ineffectual (well even more ineffectual) Dom Jollie.
Perhaps it is human nature to try and alleviate our own suffering, by causing others to suffer as well (however slightly).
Or maybe she was just trying to prolong her contact with other human beings for as long as possible before she headed off home alone.
