By Buster McNutt
Unless my parents lied about when I was born (as in, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Boogieman, Storks dropping babies down the chimney, etc.), I’m about to turn 60, which is about 25 in car years, which I suppose will make me a genuine clunker—a mostly rust-free one if you don’t count toe fungus, but a clunker nevertheless. Actually, a 25-year-old car is considered an antique, but I’m thinking I have at least five more years before I move into that category, and even then I don’t see myself hanging an “Antique” plate on the back of my yellow Speedo and heading for the beach (just try to get that picture out of your head!).
There is nothing particularly cool about a 60th birthday. This is probably the last election where the president of the United States will be older than I am, which historically has been a good thing—Obama was the only younger one, and how did that work out? In relationships with automobiles, for example, there are a few really significant birthdays. Obviously 16, when you can get your drivers license; it’s hard to believe that something like 70 percent of today’s 16-year-olds have no interest in getting a drivers license, probably because you can’t do it online at SnapTwitterChat. I mean, if you can do a blindfold vertical 360-degree jump on your boogie skate board, as well as routinely get to the fifth level in Grand Theft Auto III, why would you need to go and take an actual driving test? That would be like asking Tiger Woods, in order to qualify for the U.S. Open, to get through the third hole Windmill at the local Putt-Putt in fewer than a dozen strokes. Okay, make that the pre-wife-hit-him-upside-the-head-with-a-nine-iron Tiger Woods.
“Back in the Day” 21 was a great birthday, because you could buy beer and your car insurance rates started going down, which, taken together, doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Today your car insurance rates don’t go down until you are, like 70, have given up your drivers license, and still have 10 years left on your prison sentence for removing your air cleaner and squirting Beads O’ Bleach into the intake manifold so your car could pass the emission test.
Around age 50 you could join AARP and get all sorts of automotive discounts, for example, you could get a 25-percent discount on automotive service at any of the AARP-approved service dealers, all seven of which were, at that time, located in Nogales, Mexico, conveniently right next door to the one-hour Knee-N-Hip Replacement franchise store. Now I believe there are over 100 in the U.S., 27 of which are on cruise ships based in Miami. Fifty-five was also when you could get free coffee refills at McDonald’s as long as you didn’t leave the property. They had to modify that when a church bus full of seniors parked in the drive-through lane for over an hour so they could get that free refill before heading to the oxygen therapy exhibition at Legoland. Now many of those deals are gone since, because of declining enrollment, AARP has redefined “Senior” to include anyone in the 12th grade, most of whom who are a long way from 50 years old, with the possible exception of members of the varsity bowling team and any members of the Audio Visual Club, who are still wandering the halls with 16 millimeter film projectors—apparently they are protected under the Common Core/No Child Bowling Projectionist Left Behind law.
It has been said that 60 is not when you think you are old—it’s just when everybody younger thinks you are old. My grand daughter asked her Mom, “Did Grand Pa McNutt fight in the Civil War?” To which she answered, “No, dear, I believe he had a medical deferment because of his hemorrhoids.” I’ve noticed in the grocery store, younger women race to get in front of me in the check out line, possibly concerned that I might fall over dead or maybe forget why I am there and why there are eight cans of Ensure in my cart, or even worse, that I might ask for the senior discount after all the groceries have been scanned, or horror of all horrors, that I might actually try to pay with a check!
And then there is the anti-16-years-old-drivers-license issue. In many states, once you reach a certain age, there are special drivers license renewal rules for “older” drivers. A few states require vision tests as early as 40 years old to renew drivers licenses! Florida, on the other hand, requires that people 80 and over must renew every six (rather than eight) years and must pass an eye exam with each renewal. So, technically, you could drive legally blind in Florida twice as long as in, say, Maryland.
Here in Florida, the state pastime is getting old. Of the four houses across the street in my neighborhood, only one has any occupants under 80. And one of them (83 years “young”) still works at, you guessed it, the drivers license testing bureau, giving eye tests. And it gets better. When we moved to Florida a few years ago I went to get my drivers license. I filled out all the paperwork and was told to step over to the eye-test machine. I told the clerk I’d left my glasses in the car and would need to go get them. She told me to go ahead and see if I still even needed glasses to drive. I did great until I got to the bottom line and couldn’t tell if I was looking at a “6” or a “g.” I told the clerk I wasn’t sure. She said to take a shot at it. I guessed wrong. She said try again, and I got it right. She explained that in Florida eye tests were like baseball—it takes three strikes to be out, plus I was the last applicant of the day and she needed to get home. As we left I thanked her, and opened her driver’s door so she could get behind the wheel. Then I opened the back door.
Her service dog jumped right in. •
