Planning For The Future (It'll Be Delicious)

I’m not looking forward to getting old, and I’m pretty sure that most people aren’t. However, there is the old saying that when you’re given lemons you make lemonade, and I was recently given a prime example of this.

I was checking out at the grocery store. (Luckily, I didn’t end up in the line manned by my arch-enemy cashier. For more on her, check my previous posts.) I was feeling pretty proud of myself, because I had managed to get through the entire store without falling victim to an Undefeatable Double Stuff Oreo Snack Attack, which is actually an amazing accomplishment for me. (Undefeatable Double Stuff Oreo Snack Attacks have plagued me for years, especially when the cool mint flavor was introduced.) Because of this rare moment of actual willpower, laid out before me were carrots and wheat bread and spinach and all of the other things that cause you to you hold decade-long grudges against your parents for buying when you’re eight years old. I was quite proud of myself.

Right behind me was an old man, and he unloaded his purchases on the belt. It was all ice cream. There had to be seven or eight containers of different sizes and flavors. I looked back at him, and he seemed very content with his decision to eat entirely out of the top portion of the food pyramid.

And why wouldn’t he be? When you’re old you get to do stuff like that. At that point, what do you really have to lose? You most likely have no metabolism anymore, and getting out of bed is probably the most exercise your body can take, anyway. Why not enjoy all of foods you prohibited yourself from eating back when you were young and trying to impress members of the opposite sex? What’s it going to do, slow you down even more?

(I’ll admit that the old man could’ve been buying the ice-cream for a party or something, but I’d like to think that was what he was going to eat for the entire week.)

With this in mind, I’ve just resolved that when I get that old I’m going to allow myself to eat Oreos until my teeth fall out, and after that I’ll dunk them in milk and vigorously gum them.

If that’s not something to look forward to, I don’t know what is.

My role model here is the Grandpa from the movie Grumpy Old Men. I’ll conclude with one of his quotes, which just so happens to be a favorite of mine:

“I turned 95 years old. And I never exercised a day in my life. Every morning, I wake up, and I smoke a cigarette. And then I eat five strips of bacon. And for lunch, I eat a bacon sandwich. And for a midday snack?”

“Bacon?”

“Bacon”