Geezer vs. Senior

Some of you appear to be offended by the term Geezer. Personally, I am offended by the word Senior. Seniors are doddery, sick, mentally unbalanced, demented, pharmaceutically dependent and poor. Geezers are poor, active, looking for discounts, experienced and alert, healthy and loaded for bear. Some may have a preference for recreational drugs.

Think of the benefits of geezerdom: you are older and better; you’ve been there, done that; you’ve been good to yourself all your life, so you don’t have many geezer health problems; and you know how to party. Seniors are anxious; they need lessons in how to relax and pills to make them sleep. Geezers can overdo it. Seniors are too frightened to do it.

Geezer or senior, ageism is the biggest bias we face – and practise. So you’ve reached the age of 90? That is something to boast about, while decrying the habits and behaviour of all those younger than you.  But 60? Something to mourn. You hate it when people offer you a seat on the bus or ask if you want a senior’s discount.

Then there’s 65. In Canada that means Geezers are suddenly eligible for an old age pension. I know a starving artist geezer who never had a steady income until he hit the golden age. Everything is discounted; some things are free. You can ride forever on the B.C. Ferries – for free, as long as it’s a designated seniors’ –  make that geezers’ – day.

Welcome to Geezer Nation, where life is pretty carefree and everyone has plenty of time to have fun. Where your biggest worry of the day is whether you’ll get a parking space close to the door of the gym so you don’t have to walk far to your fitness class. Where even the Scottie dogs have a look of senility when they refuse to leave your lawn after leaving a deposit on it. Where women outnumber men to such a degree that there’s a tacit understanding the married ones will share their husbands. Where those oft-fantasized threesomes are a common occurrence: GBG coffee dates. 

Anxiety is not unknown, however. After all, at 60-plus you are a lot closer to certain death than you were thirty years ago. But in Geezer Nation, you don’t have to look far to ease your aching mind. Drugs – the prescription as well as the recreational variety – abound. A sure sign that geezers rule is the popularity of workshops on raising medicinal herbs. Geezers can’t afford to buy all those anti-depressants, laxatives, anti-anxiety pills and hormone replacement drugs the doctors are always prescribing for us.

Here in Victoria, a special principality of the old, isolated far from the full Canadian demographic on Vancouver Island, you’re a geezer if you’re over 60, but up to 75, you’re considered a young person. Only at 90 do you start to utter the word “old”. Victoria is not just for geezers, of course – it’s a haven for the homeless of all ages and a site for monster homes of the rich and faintly famous who touch down for a couple of months of the year. But as the capital of memory, the balmiest location north of the border and the garden city (no idle boast), this Geezer mecca has no equal.

Today’s Geezer consumer tip: Lionel Richie has released a new album, Tuskegee, featuring duets with some youngsters such as Shania Twain and fellow geezer Willie Nelson, recording some Richie hits such including “Say You, Say Me” and “All Night Long”.