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kyabetsu at 09:23am on 12/02/2006
kyabetsu at 09:23am on 12/02/2006has got a head cold? you've got 3 chances and the first 2 don't count. I'm fever-y, not-breathe-ing-y, and all those nasty nyQuil symptoms too. Go, me. I'm a champion cold catcher. Ask Kevin. He'll cough once and be over something, but I'm out for 4 days.
I've been asking for an immune system for Christmas for YEARS now, but so far, it's a no-go.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROXANE!!!
I'm too snowed in to go shopping.
YES! snow. there's that too. not just disease, but ill-weather. If i lived in the middle ages? I'd be dead 500 times over by now. Thank God that natural selection no longer has a hold on lower-middle-class suburbanites. Otherwise, I would have been survival-of-the-fittest-ed right into the ground years ago. Probably by a healthy toddler.
So. i'm running a fever. which is always entertaining--specifically when i write while feverish. I'll go back after the damn thing's broken and re-read what all i had to say and i'll be just as confused as helen keller in a furniture store. ...i just CAME from the dining room... why is there another dining room... and ...another... SHIT. Where the HELL AM I?!?!
haha. as entertaining as that thought is, there are plenty of situations where Helen Keller would provide me with mirth. Helen Keller at drivers' ed, for one. I swear we had kids who Helen could have out-driven in my drivers' ed class. I think they all got licenses.
DUDE.
speaking of crazy people to have drivers' licencses-- I was at the gas station a few days ago, and i was waiting in freaking LINE for a pump (note to self, mind the time...around 5pm, people tend to stop for gas.) when this ANCIENT old guy gets out of the beat up pick up truck in front of me. The Codger (b/c this guy truly was the codgeriest thing on 2 feet and 2 canes) WOBBLES his way towards the pay-booth on his 2 canes and 2 legs. His knees must not work, b/c it was like a freak slow-motion FALLING towards the cashier's booth. His hands were shakey too b/c those canes were jittering like a rock-ola cafe in the 1950's. So he does this old 'old man' dance towards the pay booth, and i've got one hand on my door handle, b/c i'm certain that at any moment, one of those canes is gonna shimmy right out from under him and i'm ready to throw open the door and try to DIVE between him and the concrete. Never an issue. He does his crazy walk to the booth, pays, crazy-walks back. He fills up a spare tank in the back of his truck, crazy-walks/stumbles/fidgets/flippers his way into the cab of the thing and drives off. the LIVING MARIONETTE is out on the roads! He's a LEGAL DRIVER!!
i know that enforcing 'old-people off the road' laws would mean we'd have to (heaven forbid) have a better PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION system... but I drove to kevin's and home that night with more than a bit of trepidation. That guy, and hundreds just like him were on the road with me.
I've been asking for an immune system for Christmas for YEARS now, but so far, it's a no-go.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROXANE!!!
I'm too snowed in to go shopping.
YES! snow. there's that too. not just disease, but ill-weather. If i lived in the middle ages? I'd be dead 500 times over by now. Thank God that natural selection no longer has a hold on lower-middle-class suburbanites. Otherwise, I would have been survival-of-the-fittest-ed right into the ground years ago. Probably by a healthy toddler.
So. i'm running a fever. which is always entertaining--specifically when i write while feverish. I'll go back after the damn thing's broken and re-read what all i had to say and i'll be just as confused as helen keller in a furniture store. ...i just CAME from the dining room... why is there another dining room... and ...another... SHIT. Where the HELL AM I?!?!
haha. as entertaining as that thought is, there are plenty of situations where Helen Keller would provide me with mirth. Helen Keller at drivers' ed, for one. I swear we had kids who Helen could have out-driven in my drivers' ed class. I think they all got licenses.
DUDE.
speaking of crazy people to have drivers' licencses-- I was at the gas station a few days ago, and i was waiting in freaking LINE for a pump (note to self, mind the time...around 5pm, people tend to stop for gas.) when this ANCIENT old guy gets out of the beat up pick up truck in front of me. The Codger (b/c this guy truly was the codgeriest thing on 2 feet and 2 canes) WOBBLES his way towards the pay-booth on his 2 canes and 2 legs. His knees must not work, b/c it was like a freak slow-motion FALLING towards the cashier's booth. His hands were shakey too b/c those canes were jittering like a rock-ola cafe in the 1950's. So he does this old 'old man' dance towards the pay booth, and i've got one hand on my door handle, b/c i'm certain that at any moment, one of those canes is gonna shimmy right out from under him and i'm ready to throw open the door and try to DIVE between him and the concrete. Never an issue. He does his crazy walk to the booth, pays, crazy-walks back. He fills up a spare tank in the back of his truck, crazy-walks/stumbles/fidgets/flippers his way into the cab of the thing and drives off. the LIVING MARIONETTE is out on the roads! He's a LEGAL DRIVER!!
i know that enforcing 'old-people off the road' laws would mean we'd have to (heaven forbid) have a better PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION system... but I drove to kevin's and home that night with more than a bit of trepidation. That guy, and hundreds just like him were on the road with me.
sicky-sick
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Does America not have old-age driving licences? My Dad is 70 in May and apart from a dodgy knee is in perfect health, mentally and physically. However to drive after his 70th birthday he has to re-take his driving test every 3 years. OUR general licences only last from 17-70.
On another note - a person can be shaky at walking and still be perfectly okay to drive. I find your comments rather... amiss, both from an age-ist and a disability discrimination viewpoint. I can't walk well. Some days I walk like I have rubber legs. I walk with a walking stick. My hands are shaky with tendonitus. Do you want to keep me off the road? I could still handle a car. (The fact that I choose not to, is neither here nor there.) In spite of his incapacities he is still COPING and INDEPENDENT (to some extent at least). I say GOOD ON HIM!!!!
If you saw him driving and he was all over the place and clearly not in control of the car, I could understand your concern, but to raise that view based on how he WALKS? That's unfair. :/
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as for his driving, since hands, arms, feet and legs are very much a part of driving a car? I don't think it's a stretch for me to be concerned about his ability to opperate a very large, old vehicle in interstate traffic. Not in a city where no one's going over 30 mph---but pulling onto 97 north at 75+ mph? We've got HEALTHY citizens who's reflexs can't cope with that--as our many traffic accidents prove.
Good for being determined. Good for being independent. But the first time some one skids in front of that guy, i do NOT wanna be in a car with him. Or in the one next to him. It's more than his independence. It's the health of everyone else on the road with him. We don't let folks drive inebriated b/c their reaction times and depth perception is SHIT--yet, some people handle their drink better than others. My dad was a career drinker and could say the alphabet backwards and walk the line no matter how many high-balls he'd had for meals...but he's just as banned from driving after 2 drinks as my own light-weight ass. Letting folks not drive "impaired" is hardly a stretch.
I don't know what the requirements on the driver's license are after 75, but My grandmother's still got a non-restricted license, and i've had more life-flashing-before-my-eyes encounters when SHE'S doing her LEGAL driving than any time while i was learning.
Age-ist? Maybe. Anti-Disability? Maybe. But i'm fine with anyone behind the wheel that has passed something a bit more stringent than our US driving qualifications. I would say it's a case by case basis--and that if you're clearly having trouble moving yourself? I'm allowed to be worried about your ability to move something weighing a hair less than a ton.
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As for the other thing-- My dad told me YEARS ago that old people had to sign an oath upon getting their licenses renewed, that they would NEVER drive above 45 mph.