Phoebe Kate

Old people are a breed apart.  It’s not that they can’t use a computer and don’t know what Facebook and Twitter are.  It’s not that they can’t appreciate good music, like Blink 182 and Outkast and Foo Fighters.  It’s not even that repeat themselves and endlessly extol the bliss of the “good old days,” although I can’t see anything good about World War I, the Depression, the Dustbowl, World War II, the Cold War Era and the Nixon years.

No, what totally sets this age demographic of 75-and-above apart from the rest of the world is their language.  They’re ostensibly speaking English, but you still have no idea what they’re talking about — or, more accurately, what certain words and expressions mean to them.

For a while now, my 92-year-old mother-in-law who lives just over the fence from us has been complaining about vague maladies.  She’s been feeling “dauncy.”  She thinks she has ” a touch of la grippe.”  She “isn’t feeling like herself.”  She’s “isn’t in the pink.”  She’s ”not 100 percent.” 

Pressed to cite specific symptoms, she simply repeats the above, as if it explains everything. She has no fever.  Her appetite is good — when she heard we’d bought some lamb chops, she immediately laid claim to several for herself, cooked them up, ate them all up and gnawed the bones clean.  She’s not lethargic, not puny-looking, obviously in no pain and perky enough to talk my ear off about those good old days. 

Well, her health mystery is solved now.  Do you know what ”dauncy, a touch of la grippe, not feeling like yourself, not being in the pink and not feeling 100 percent” actually mean? 

It means you’re constipated.  Our Old One can’t remember when she last pooped.  And with her memory, that could have been yesterday or six weeks ago.  Lord only knows.

I’ve decided that people born in post-Victorian era developed a code whereby to describe problems that they felt were unseemly to speak of directly.  It’s Oldcode.  Now, if my mother-in-law had told another oldster that she wasn’t “100 percent,” they’d have known right away what she was talking about it.  They would have discreetly said, “Oh, when I’m not feeling like myself, I just take that trusty blue bottle out of my medicine chest.” 

I would be clueless about what this trusty blue bottle contains, but any golden oldies would know that it’s Phillips Milk of Magnesia.  More Oldcode.  

It took a trip to the doctor and the pharmacy for us to get to the bottom (excuse the totally tasteless pun) of what ails my mother-in-law.  When she got out of the physician’s office, my husband asked, “What do you have?”  To which she replied, “A prescription.” 

Of course, he wanted to find out the diagnosis, but she chose to cleverly stonewall the attempt.  So when we went to Walgreen’s to pick up the medicine for her, my husband inquired, “What exactly did the doctor prescribe for my mother?”  The pharmacist replied, “A laxative.”

Mystery solved.  Oldcode successfully cracked — for the moment, at least, or until my mother-in-law next opens her mouth.

–phoebe kate