This is serious. It is so serious in fact that I am about to use a word that is rarely used by West Texas dirt farmers, or High Plains Cotton Ginners for that matter. I guess that goes to show how far I have come, or gone, depending on your point of view, over the course of the last ten years. Ok, here I go, I am having a…I’m experiencing a… wow, this is uncomfortable…dilemma, there I said it. I am having a dilemma, and I need your help, and advice as to how to handle a recurring situation in my life.

Yesterday afternoon Paula and I went to see The Blind Side. Now let me tell you right now, you have to go see this movie. I don’t know that you can call it a Christmas movie, but if you can, it is my favorite Christmas movie of all time. There are no corny singing scenes that seem to just pop up out of nowhere. No crazy man running down the middle of the street in a blinding snow shouting at everyone about how wonderful things are. I am glad I’m not a High School football coach, or at least the coach portrayed in the movie, but other than that this is a great movie. A positive experience in the same way the book, Same Kind of Different as Me, is positive. I won’t say any more because I don’t want to ruin anything for you, but I do want you to go see The Blind Side. Ok, I will say one more thing for the guys out there who may think this might be a sappy girlie movie. Are you ready? Sandra Bullock looks better than she ever has, and that alone is worth the price of admission.

“Grumps!”

“What?”

“Do I really have to tell you what?”

“Ok, I get the point; I think this may be Sandra Bullock’s best role to date.”

Which brings me back to my pro..bl….dilemma. When we arrived at the theater yesterday Paula went inside while I got in line to buy the tickets. I walked up to the window and said, “Two for The Blind Side please.”

“Yes sir, that’ll be fourteen dollars.”

I handed him a twenty and said “Here ya go.”

“Oh I’m sorry, it’ll be ten dollars.”

Wow, that was nice. “Ok.”

I walked on into the theater, and Paula and I got in line for a shared popcorn and coke. (That was dinner last night.) While rearranging things so I could carry everything, I handed Paula the tickets. She looked at them to see which way we should go in order to get to our showing and said, “Senior Citizen.”

“What?”

“You got the senior citizen discount.”

Now friends, therein lies the problem. What is a man to do when he finds out he unwittingly cheated the system? Now I’ve had the predicament of looking dumber than I really am for my entire life. I kind of like that because it makes it easier to fly under the radar, and then impress people when you accomplish something they didn’t think you were sharp enough to achieve. But this, this is different. Who besides a teenager wants’ to look older than they really are? Just last Saturday afternoon Paula and I went to a piano recital for our eight year old granddaughter, and the gentleman there commented that we were too young to be the grandparents of Mary Alice. Course, he was looking at Paula when he said it. I think the old guy was making a play for the beautiful young chick on my arm.

Back to the dilemma, when someone gives me a senior citizen discount without asking if I am a senior citizen, should I just consider it my good fortune and move on, or should I tell them that I don’t qualify for the discount?  I need you to weigh in on this situation, because I want to do the right thing. Just so you’ll know we went on into the movie, and enjoyed the experience four dollars richer than we had expected to be. I was ok with that until I got to thinking about what had just happened, and then I started to get upset. This young man had insulted me. He had assumed that I was old enough to be a senior citizen.  The audacity of that wet behind the ears sapsucker. What does he know anyway? I bet he shaves using whipped cream and a cat! I was beginning to think I should go visit the manager and let him know how much damage had been do to my self-esteem. In fact, I was thinking the only way to rectify the situation was to receive a full refund for the price of admission. No, wait! That’s not even enough; I should be given two life time passes good for use at any of the chains movie theaters in the entire world! And, and, all the popcorn, coke, candy, and nacho’s me and mine can cram down every time we visit one their retched viewing establishments!  I’m sure that would make me feel better about myself. Yup, take everything I can from the rich folks who own that dump, that’ll show ‘em.  

I’ll give him the fact that my hair is more white than any other color. Course if he watched me walk up he probably thought that any body with that many different limps and gimps has to be old. In fact he may have thought that I was looking pretty young for a man my age. Hum…you know I may have even lifted my false teeth with my tongue while I waited for my tickets, I guess that could make a guy think I was older than I really am. I do have a few wrinkles around the ole eyes, and let’s face it a little shriveled up bag a bones body that looks as if it were trying to steal a bowling ball by covering it with a shirt and jacket might make me look a little older than I am too.

Humm…I don’t know what do you think? Should I just accept the discounts that come my way on occasion, or should I thank them kindly and let them know that I do in fact owe them the full ticket price? Oh, I hope I didn’t offend anyone by using that word, you know, dilemma. I mean it’s not word you hear everyday. There is one thing I need to know. It ain’t no cuss word is it?

Till next time,

Grump

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 11:02 am and is filed under Life Learned Lessons and Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.