Jim and I went to IHOP\u00a0tonight for dinner. It was a slow night and we were the only ones in our server’s section. He and I talked about our respective days and the server was chatty when she came around as well.<\/p>\n
We finished our meals and the server came back over. She talked about how she’d dropped something in the lettuce bin and spilled a bunch of ice and made a mess.<\/p>\n
Then she said, “Mind if I ask how old you guys are?”<\/p>\n
Not really sure where this was going, I replied,<\/p>\n
“43”<\/p>\n
“Oh,” she said, “Well, I’m not even going to ask you,” she said to Jim and was off again to get us the check.<\/p>\n
It took me a minute to process what had happened. She wasn’t just making conversation. She was trying to find out – in the bluntest<\/em> way possible – if either of us qualified for the senior discount. Since the “obviously older” of the two of us was 43, she figured that was it and did not give us any percentage off.<\/p>\n Jim, who is a bit older than I am, could barely contain his mirth. I glowered.<\/p>\n When the she came back over I told her, “For the record, he’s older than me”. \u00a0Because I was feeling petty – you got a problem with that?<\/p>\n She asked how old he was and Jim didn’t want to say. She then joked about not feeling old herself, but her 34 year old daughter made her feel old.<\/p>\n We paid the check and went to the car where, at my urging, Jim looked up when a senior discount kicks in at IHOP. The answer?<\/p>\n 55.<\/p>\n She thought I looked at least 55.<\/p>\n Are you shitting me? I do not look 55. A little gray hair and suddenly I’m pushing around a walker.<\/p>\n 55, my ass. Which, speaking of, could pass for a 20 year old’s.<\/p>\n I was in a bit of snit the rest of the evening and we called it an early night. I mean, yes, she meant well and was trying to save us a little money, but 55?<\/p>\n You can’t see it from there, but I’m scowling.<\/p>\n Senior discount… grumble, grumble.<\/p>\n I got my first gray hair at 18, started losing my hair in my early thirties, and got a “welcome to AARP” card in my mid\u00a030’s. \u00a0Yeah, thank you.<\/p>\n And if anyone makes a “golden buckeye” joke, prepare to be kicked in the nuts.\u00a0Yeah, it’s like that. \u00a0And yeah, it’s gotta be<\/em> like that.<\/p>\n Now I’m going to go play some Minecraft and listen to some dubstep while I do it.<\/p>\n 55.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jim and I went to IHOP\u00a0tonight for dinner. It was a slow night and we were the only ones in our server’s section. He and I talked about our respective days and the server was chatty when she came around as well. We finished our meals and the server came back over. She talked about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2009,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008\/revisions\/2009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}