One day we'll all tell stories like this

I was forced to have a conversation with an old person this week. And it was one of the boring kinds of conversations that old people tend towards. Stories about people I don’t know in places I have never been proliferated with rhetoric questions.

"Ho, ho – let me tell you, well, Stuart [don’t know him], he’s been a friend of mine ever since we met on that coach trip, oh, it must be… what 20 years? [no idea] Now, wait, when did I go on that coach trip? [Haven’t a clue] it was 1987, I believe, so what’s that? [20 years is close, but then you could have said 50 years at the start, I’d have gone with it] This is 2010 and so 1987… to 1990… then add the 10 and… 23 years! So - ho, ho, - I was out with Stuart and, you know, Jimmy Smith [no], at the railway club [never heard of it], up in Fort William [never been], I think, anyway, and we drank vodka and coke. I couldn’t remember what happened that night when I got up in the morning! [That’s it? That’s the story? Really, about 2 people I don’t know and you in a place I have never been, having a drink with no memorable action. When even was this?] Well that must have been, what do you think? [how would I know?] Oh, 6 or 7 years ago [Great]."

The story he told after, however, was different:

"My friend Peter, you know, [no] he’s in an old folks care home these days. They found him wandering down trying to reach the coast. He lost a bit of his mental faculty. He recognizes faces but can’t place them in time or events in his life [is “Peter” you?]. Actually, he was in the local paper the other day, did you see it? [no] There was a picture of him. The care nurses had put him on a space hopper. They got the paper along to take a picture. He looked really happy."

This story made me a bit sad. I bet 3 years ago Peter would never have thought he would be in the local paper pictured bouncing around on a Space Hopper. The only reason he is happy is because he lives his life in some sort of frameless time limbo and possibly thinks himself a form of non-contextual future pensioner of Neptune. What a shame. The nurses probably only slapped him on it out of some sick humour.

So I thought that I would use this blog for once, to make a stand:

Don’t humiliate old timers with dementia by placing them on Space Hoppers.

Or at the very least fix deeley boppers on their heads to make it a bit more mainstream funny.