The Folks

I have a fascination with old folks.  What is it about them that fascinates me?  Well, let me tell you.  

First I prefer to call older people "folks" therefore I will refer to them as "The Folks".  

We all age and I have noticed that as my parents age, I age.  Weird.  Therefore, we are all turning into our parents.  

Grandma sitting on her special bench at her burial plot.
She's OK sitting at her own burial plot.  This is why we love
grandma!

One of the oldest people I know is my grandma Verna.  She is 98.  She is really old and I noticed that when "folks" age they hate telling anyone how old they are and so they lie about their age or just don't tell. Once these folks get beyond age 90 they no longer lie about their age but they brag about it.  I don't blame them because it takes a lot of effort to reach your 90's.  As for my grandma, she is about as perky as any 98 year old I know.  She will be sitting on her couch and pop up and run into the other room to grab something to show you.  I should put a clock on her sometime.  

Invariably grandma will return from her sprint to the next room with some type of scrapbook or diary.  Folks love to reminisce.  They love to talk about the good ol' days when they walked all those miles to school in sub zero temps and would come home to work on the farm shoveling horse manure and cleaning eggs.  I loved those stories the first 80 times but now I just lip sync the words while standing behind the folks as they tell these stories for the umpteenth time.  (umpteenth is a word I learned from the folks.)

Grandma saying "Oh Laws!"

Which brings me to my next old folk-ism.  They say strange words.  For instance, when a younger person will say "oh my gosh"  my grandma loves to say "Oh laws".  What is a laws?  I love it when she says this word.  She also calls her family room the "amusement room".  I love that name so much that from now on I'm going to start calling my family room the amusement room. 

When my mom talks about things that she considers "risque" she uses a different tone of voice and changes the words just enough to let you know that she is now speaking of something VERY RISQUE.   


For instance, she refers to her uterus as her "U Triss"  and when she says sexual she pronounces it "sex-yull".  When she says the "N" word which is 'nipple' in her house it is pronounced like NYP-PULL (really enunciate the Y in the first syllable and make a huge round O with your lips in the second syllable when pronouncing the U).  I still can't say the N word.


About my mom's "special words", I hate it when she says those words and when she does I promptly stand up and leave the room because the topic that is sure to follow is not something I want to discuss. 

One of the folks wearing my son's hunting
hat.  Now picture this folk saying  the above
mentioned "N" word.

My mom loves to tell you about the birth of her children IN DETAIL.  This is also not a topic I want hear about but she loves to tell the stories.  When she gets to the parts about "bearing down"  or is it "baring down (I'm not sure how to spell it because if I were to define what she is saying, the first "bearing down" definition is: A bear who is growling while birthing a rather large baby; and the second definition of "baring down" is: Having to do with bare naked parts used for birthing.)  Both are topics that should never be discussed between my mom and myself.

The next thing I've noticed about old folks is their need to discuss their bodily functions and in particular their bathroom habits.  This is also a subject I prefer to not discuss.

Moving on...... Folks always and eventually lose their hearing.  Have you noticed that when THEY can't hear they accuse you of mumbling when you are enunciating each word and yelling at the same time.  That is not an easy thing to do.  

At our church we have a lot of "folks" that attend.  The other day in a sunday school class one of the folks turned to her neighbor and said in a LOUD voice, "What in the world is she talking about?"  referring to the teacher.  The neighbor said,  "She's talking about you!"  

Folk: "About who?"

Neighbor:  "About you!" 

Folk:  (fiddles with her hearing aid)  "About who?"

Neighbor: (Fiddles with her own hearing aid)  "I said she's talking about you."

Folk:  "Well for heavens sake, what is she saying?"

Neighbor: "That you are a good example."

Folk:  "I'm ample?  Well, what's that supposed to mean?"

This went on for a couple of very entertaining minutes.

Some of the folks that attend our church really love to crank up their hearing aids so they can hear the speakers better, not that cranking up the volume helps because then the aids start a buzzing.  The sound they make is a high pitched shrill tone that then becomes the background noise for the whole congregation.  My question is...."Can they not hear this buzz?"   Apparently not thus the aids.  What a vicious cycle.


My daughter in law told me that one day her grandma asked her grandpa, "Where's Bob?"  Grandpa IS Bob and also grandma's husband.  

This is precisely why I love the folks.  They can say things like this and it's no big deal.


The folks can clack their dentures, pass gas in public places, go to the front of 2 hour lines in their jazzy's, say swears, wear their clothes inside out, smell funny, talk about their bowels,  yell into cell phones, sleep at any hour of the day,  get handicapped stickers even though they can golf 18 holes, and wear socks with their sandals (dress or athletic) and it's OK because they don't care what anyone thinks.  


Ahhh, the beauty of age and what a fascinating crowd.  I love them all!

5 Generations and I'm in the middle which means I'm as close to
being one of the "Folks" as not.