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Saturday, December 31, 2011

Fighting The Jerries



I am a Jerry.
"Jerry" is slang used by my children, and it is left-over from the Great War... "Jerry" is derived from "Geriatric" and means one of advanced years, and the Great War is a future antagonism for our offspring:  what to do with us, the aged encumbrances?

I do not intend to have a home health provider.
My daughter turned to me the other day... I was giving her a hard time about something, I suppose... and said that I had better not act like that in the undefined future time when she has some sort of hideous and "ironic" custody  of me (as if I were witless and the workhouses were out of commission, so in the meantime she had to stand on street corners with a hurdy-gurdy and I capered - as well as an octogenarian could - in some grotesque monkey suit, while she sought an old-age home for me), and I need some care provider. All in jest... I said, no. That's not the way it will be.
As they -  "they" being the jackals of Youth - stand about in the corridor, discussing which cuckoo's nest of an institution or home to put me in, I shall be laying plans.

As they go before the judge to testify to my diminished mental capacity, I shall stand and smile and nod my head like a good old Jerry. As I go to my home for one last time, I shall dump the documents from the banks I have already emptied out into a club bag, take a few books and some clothes, get a limo and beat it to the airport to make my connection for the Islands. If some young relative stumbles in on me, the money I spent on martial arts for the elderly will have been a good investment. Shall they arrest me for battery? And why should I care, since they have conspired to deprive me of my life? Nope. I shall dispose of the young interloper with the same aplomb Frank Sinatra disposed of Henry da Silva in The Manchurian Candidate,  kicking through the wood paneling and breaking tables... and I am into the taxi and making my way to Margaritaville.

And they will say... we thought he was such a good Jerry...he was a Jerry that knew his place...it was funny the way he shuffled around in his slippers...but - and here we agree with Nurse Ratchett - the only good Jerry is an institutionalized Jerry.
Use the knowledge of Stem Cell research to give life to those who are at a point where they see that they are not immortal and do not wish to live in this social prison anymore. Let them set their sails to the wind and escape to the Islands for a blaze of glory!


Great God, let us be free! Let all the spirits of Mankind be free at last!
--
reprinted and enhanced.

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