'You don't get a bitch pass just because you're old'

(Language warning)

I heard that line in a sticom not long ago when a table full of nasty old ladies was giving the wise-cracking waitress a hard time.

It spoke to something that has been on my mind for a while. I would suggest to those who think at some age you are given license to insult, criticize, demean with impunity, ignorning basic courtesy and respect, in other words a bitch pass, maybe you think you have that right, but I wouldn't start too early because when the time comes that you might get away with it, there won't be anyone around to listen to you.

I realize by writing about it, I may be embracing the very concept I am about to be criticizing. But because I am approaching that birthday with a seven and a zero in it, I can say what I want, right? Truth be told: Wrong!

In the past few years three different people, all younger than I am, have told me they like being older because now they can say what they think. I am not sure who made up that rule, that you can speak your mind without caring what the effects might be on another person because of your age, but those who've adopted it as gospel may be making a mistake. Of those three people, one is no longer a friend, one I keep at sort of arm's length because I get tired of being criticized and told what a jerk I am and tiptoeing through conversations so as not to speak the triggers that set off that particular eruption, and the third, well, I never see that one very much anyway so it hardly matters.

What matters is that at whatever age you decide you can speak your mind, there are still consequences and repercussions. And who decided at what age that rule kicks in? Is there a specific dividing line somewhere? Is there a book? A law? I always thought that point arrived in your 80s and as you approached death, when not much of anything really mattered anymore except making some sort of peace with whatever deity you choose to join shortly. But even then, hurtful, critical, insulting words still have effects and perhaps repercussions. I am not sure I would want to insult the person standing next to the thin plastic tube who could easily pinch off the morphine drip.

What made today the day to write it was once I again I was called a jerk, only this time it was because I did the same thing, I spoke my mind without regard to the consequences. Only, the older person I was talking with didn't like it. So apparently most often this sort of discourse is supposed to be only a one-way conversation. Can you picture two old codgers sitting face to face telling each other a lifetime of complaints, or worse, one complaining and the other just sitting there taking it? At some point conversation stops and slugging commences.

One of the last things one of those three told me was he liked being able to tell me "fuck you" whenever he felt like it. When I politely told him I didn't appreciate that, he acted totally surprised as if he were allowed to say what he wants regardless of its effect on the person it was directed at, me in this case, or on others within listening distance. Later I overheard him telling someone else with some measure of surprise he had just discovered I didn't like being told "fuck you" all the time. That person looked at me questioning. I rolled my eyes. As if anybody wouldn't mind being told "fuck you" whenever someone felt like it. The last thing I ever said to that person was "fuck off."

Maybe the real advantage to aging is your skin gets a little tougher