Don’t Let the Tangerine Tree Smack You in the Ass on the Way Out

This was posted elsewhere exactly one year ago today. It is repeated here only after securing permission by the author, who remains shackled and bleeding in the other room.

Here’s some encouraging news:

For the first time since the Depression, more Americans ages 75 and older have been leaving the South than moving there, according to a New York Times analysis of Census Bureau data.

The reversal appears to be driven in part by older people who retired to the South in their 60s, but decided to return home to their children and grandchildren in the Northeast, Midwest and West after losing spouses or becoming less mobile.

“As the numbers increase of people in their early to mid-60s that move from the North to the South, we would also expect the numbers of people 75 and older that move from the South to the North to subsequently increase as well,” said Grant I. Thrall, a geography professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville. — NY Times

Old farts linger, alright, but maybe there’s hope. The fewer who arrive, the less saturated we become with bad drivers, cranky diners, terminally slow counter service, sickly people, and the unmitigated horror of hideous decomposing seniors in various states of decrepitude everywhere you look.

Ask them and they insist not only was everything better where they came from, but they never really wanted to come here anyway. They “hate the humidity” and “miss the change of seasons.” They “despise the restaurants.” They “resent the teeming crowds” and their “cramped, charmless condo.” Best of all, they complain about “rude people!” Seniors from hell bitch about “rude people!” Turns out it was their kids’ idea to unload ’em, and it’s easy to see why.

It seems they hate each other, too, so they’re finally leaving before they rot completely to the core. Sell the car they never learned to drive, the condo they never learned to love. Leave behind the garish varicose-vein revealing shorts and brainless short-brimmed beanies. Choke down your very last early bird special — hey, the salt shakers stay here, remember?

They’re off to become absorbed into the dimly recollected past they thought they’d put behind. Home to haunt back alleys of cities that forgot them; to people with no connection to them, to families who don’t want them closely standing by. Back where a long dirt nap in a deep cold grave will provide their only welcome, arms outstretched like old true friends.