Wisdom of the Aged

When I'm old, I'm going to be plaintive, querulous, badly behaved and probably smelly. In which case, I shall be able to say exactly what I like, when I like and to whomever I like, since the rest of the population will simply peg me as demented thus not responsible for my behaviour. I intend to become like Socrates, but angrier and less tolerant and with bigger hair in which small mammals make their homes. Mincing words will be a thing of the past. Perhaps I shall by then, and with malice aforethought, have inflicted my noxious presence on one or both of my children who in desperation try to shuttle me from one to the other like a red-hot coal, which is as good a way as any of getting a change of scenery. Very Jewish of me.

All this from a new book which I came across, tastefully entitled 'Sh*t My Dad Says' by Justin Halpern who is very probably as bald as an egg by now from tearing clumps of his hair out over the breakfast pronouncements of his father who, if it were possible, is more loathsome that I intend becoming.

"That woman was sexy...Out of your league? Son, let women figure out for themselves why they won't screw you. Don't do it for them."

"The worst thing you can be is a liar. OK, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then Number Two is a liar. Nazi one, liar two."

"Son, no one gives a sh*t about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that."

"What makes you so special? Nobody cares what you think. They never have."

Three of the above are actual quotes. One is not. The clue is in the phrasing, people. Tee hee.

Humour is quite subjective, one finds, and this post was more of a last, grim, pre-Holocaust despairing exercise in exploring what makes me laugh. Some women - not all, as it happens - find Kathy Lette hysterical. I read "The Llama Parlour" years ago and bought "Mad Cows" the other day in a secondhand bookshop for someone. Laugh? I almost ruptured a haemorrhoid. Had I been a woman, I would have done. Enjoy, ladies.