No. I’m not talking holiday. I’m talking about thugs and theives. It’s time for them to crawl out of their holes and prey on others instead of getting…what do you call that thing…OH! A JOB.

I visited my elderly neighbor yesterday…she’s 88…and she told me about being accosted by two young men, claiming to have a broken down car and ultimately demanding money from her. The police later told her she did just the right thing by not going into, or trying to get back into, her house. That might well have been the end of her. She said the men…and I use that term loosely…were young. Shame on them and I’m so sorry the cowards ran away when she broke free. Imagine that. Their broken car was miraculously healed. It was a silver mid-sized sedan, like a Honda Accord, she said. In case you were wondering. She teared up as she told me this story, wanting to warn me to be extra careful. I wasn’t afraid.

I was livid. Anyone who preys on the elderly deserves the death penalty, just for ‘going there’. What is WRONG with this country, that we so undervalue our elderly, that we have no respect nor regard for them, that we treat them as though they did something wrong just for LIVING long enough to age, and that we are somehow entitled to take what little most of them have left? Our elderly should be so honored that nobody would THINK of manhandling one of them. Particularly a young MAN abusing an old WOMAN. And by the way these ‘men’ demand to be RESPECTED.

People should remember that these elderly people have lived and contributed to society for a long time. They have value. If they could have chosen whether or not to have a body failing them in later years, they would have chosen to stay young in body, get that. But I promise you they would not have chosen to be young in mind and widsom-quotient. This society, regardless of how TECH oriented we have become, did so on the backs of these people and on THEIR innovations. From what I can see, what we have now is a collosal lack of ingenuity but great skill in piling on, re-doing, re-recording, re-filming. And taking credit for inventions the previous generation actually brought into the world.

Try something brand new. Respect an older person and remember this: YOU ARE RAPIDLY AGING TOO. And I hope with all of my heart that the way you treat old people is the way YOU are treated when it’s your turn.

And those two idiots are still out there. That really burns me up.