Older Folks

To be quite honest, up until this new unit I never put a thought to old people. I never thought about how life may have been different back in the day, how they may have had similar experiences in different contexts. The only interactions I have with the elderly are with my grandmother via telephone to Ireland. In general, when I am called to think of the elderly, I think of them as typically a little more mature than people in their 20s to 30s. I understand that the common media projects the elderly to be fragile and useless, what with all these ads floating around - ads like "Lifealert" and "Jitterbug", products that force us to view the elderly as nothing more than a hopeless mess with no one to turn to but us able-bodied people.