"I may be old, but I know stuff."

 On Friday, Jan sent me a strange text: "HAPPY LINDA HARRIS DAY!!!"

I didn't get it.  Later she explained, "This is the anniversary of the date you reclaimed your rightful name!"

Oh.  Oh yeah.  I remember doing that about 20 years ago, but I couldn't have recalled the date if you put me under hypnosis.  I told her that.

She replied, "I may be old, but I know stuff!"

I am hereby adopting that line for future use.  It's such an apt phrase to pull out when a younger person assumes you don't know shit about anything pre-1994 when the world as they knew it was just getting started. 

When my spinal cord stimulator stopped working, I told the pain management PA, "The vibrator isn't working to ease my pain anymore."

"I hope you don't call it that around your kids," she said--she, being about the age of one of my kids.  She didn't even try to conceal the smile that expressed her amusement that a person of my age knew what a vibrator meant in common parlance.  

I informed her that "spinal cord stimulator" was a mouthful; "Vibrator" was just my shorthand for the device implanted in my spine, that was, even as we spoke, vibrating my feet so noticeably that I wondered if other people even saw my feet shaking.

Younger people do that all the time!  "Do you do email?" they might ask--instead of "Wha's your email address?" 

Do I DO email?  I was doing email, Honey, before you were born.

Sometimes we really don't know things for a minute.  We've hopped on the bandwagon of the digital world, for example, but may temporarily not recall that "digital" used to refer to the fingers on our hand.

I mentioned a minor issue to my dermatologist.  "Occasionally, I feel a tingle in my fingers that feels like a tiny bee sting. " 

"Oh that.  It's a digital mucous cyst," she said.  "Nothing to worry about." 

In other words, a tiny harmless cyst in the finger joints.  Ohhhhhhh!  

Here I was thinking that even my fingers were in need of a password change!

As I left the dermatologist's office, one of the receptionists asked "Can I pet that dog?" and all the others laughed.

"Yeah," I said--"But this girl is really a dawg, not a bear,"

I heard them saying to each other, "I'm surprised she knew that one!" 

Yeah, I'm super cool for such an elderly person.  I know about memes and things go viral!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/P8JgEAmToC8