Geezing

A humorist once wrote that the word was first used by Chaucer who said that (of some obscure Danish king) "he geezeth", which meant he was dishing out stupid and unwanted advice and annoying eveyone. Thus older people often are called "geezers" and this book (given anonymously to me by some family member whom I will deal with later) shares some hilarious ways we geezers can get even with the young whippersnappers who call us that.

For example one chapter is called "How to mess with the minds of younger people" and offers tips like a) ask the same questions and tell the same stories and anecdotes over and over again, or b) pretend to fall asleep in mid-sentence and watch their reaction.

The reason the author makes the title a question is that geezing is not for everyone. Here are some qualifying test questions:
1. can you engineer every conversation into a description of your last surgery?
2. can you nap three times each day and still fall asleep during dinner?
3. can you get up three or four times a night to go to the bathroom and still keep awake after breakfast until your morning nap?
4. can you get good fragments of conversations by reading lips and body language?

Another venue is to capitalize on the infamous memory loss that is associated with old age by using it to free yourself from the humdrum obligations of people who actually DO remember what they promise to do. Say you'll of course be happy to go to a Tupperware party and then go golfing instead. Oops! I forgot! Or when you see yourself getting into a rant and about to put your foot in your mouth just stop mid-sentence and claim you forgot what you were about to say. They you can pretend to remember and go off in a completely different direction avoiding the faux pas.

People ask "when will I know I am old enough to geeze?" and the author has a perfect answer; when the government names things after you. However since this requires two additional ingredients beyond age namely, fame and wealth this makes it hard to qualify. To dodge this pitfall just name things after yourself. By yourself. For example the corridor to the bathroom in our home is tasefully called the Batchelder Hallway. Soon you can graduate to whole buildings and even mountain ranges.

Like most books, the back cover is filled with praise: "I'm buying this book to help support his wife Robyn. She deserves it after all she's had to put up with while being married to him all these years." And "My hope is that if enough of us buy this book he will retire and quit writing this drivel."

It's a smallish paperback from Apricot Press whose motto reads "Working hard to get big enough for the government to bail us out". My kind of book.