Didn't pay a lot of attention earlier this week when I went to a stand-alone Dunkin' Donuts (not a shop inside a grocery store) and used my gift card to buy breakfast. It seemed to me the prices for the item I bought were the same as in the grocery store shops but I got more change back. Hmmmm....
Watched a little closer this morning and discovered I'm receiving a 'senior citizens' discount. Wow. Would've thunk it? The Young Turk who railed at every injustice real, and or imagined, who embraced the vaguest of causes on the possibility there was a wrong to be righted, has reached the age, at least in appearance and chronology, if not emotionally, where we cut him a break on the price, put him on the sunny side of the patio and let him play checkers until he passes away.
All this time I thought I was part of the "My Generation" Townsend wrote of and Daltrey sang about. That two of the four guys from that band died more of self-inflicted stupidity than anything else, is only just now starting to sink in. I'm thinking back to the young fellow who gave me the senior discount (and you're reading in vain if you expect to read I rejected the discount and insisted on paying normal price. My mom raised crazy children, NOT stupid ones.) and to him, in his callow youth, I must've seemed like the oldest of men. Looking for one word to describe me, I would have opted for 'distinguished' rather than extinguished. I would have been wrong and over-charged.
'The tragedy of youth,' said a philosopher, 'is it is wasted on the young.' Suspect he was a very old philosopher, sipping a senior coffee, two creams and a Splenda.
-bill kenny
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