No, the title does not refer to the hit zombie television show; it is actually my classification of a group of people here in Italy. Now, just to clarify, I don’t dislike old people. Some of them are delightful. And by old, I really mean more of a way of being than a particular age. If you are in your 80s and still jogging like one of Paolo’s grandfathers, then kudos to you; you’re better than me. Anyways, here the people that I consider “old” are, as I’ve said before, very rude. They have an opinion on everything, always want to share that opinion, and often do everything possible to make sure you know that they deserve to be treated a certain way, because dang it, they made it that far in life. So this group of people, I don’t like at all. But here in Italy, there is a group beyond just the old. And they are literally like zombies.
In America, once people reach a certain point in life, they tend to go to assisted living homes or with their kids. This is apparently not the case here, unless their health requires it. And also, people live longer here. In fact, they have the 5th highest life expectancy in the world, with an average of 82 years (America is 38th, with 78.2 years). I don’t know why this is; maybe pizza has some magical ingredients. What I do know is that people here live way too long. Not that we should start terminating them or anything (we’ve been watching all the Terminator movies this week), but seriously. They're not living in assisted living; they're among us all. I don’t know how they’re functioning on their own. The most common place to see such old people is on the bus, of course. They’re always just sitting there, never moving, never speaking; nothing. Just staring. I think staring is the only thing they can really do at that point. And they do it really well. It always looks like an incredibly condemning, soul-searching stare, no matter who they’re looking at. Women are the best at that. The men just sit there, completely lifeless. THEY NEVER MOVE. It’s like they’re just riding the bus for forever, with no destination. I don’t actually know how they managed to hobble onto the bus in the first place. Well, occasionally I’ll see them get on the bus, and if it’s crowded, they stare into the souls of whoever is sitting down until you feel obligated to move. Normally, I would always give my seat to an old person. But I’m the size of a whale now, and feeling every bit of it, so I don’t really know who wins in the war of pregnant vs. zombie. It usually depends on how many undeserving people are taking up seats; I feel more entitled to a seat than a 13 year old kid. But I digress.
One of the Ukrainian women in my Italian class has really taken to me, and she works as a caretaker for these “anciano” as they call them here. By the way, there are different words in Italian for levels of oldness: “vecchio/a”= old; “anciano/a”= ancient. Wouldn’t you just love to be classified as ancient? Anyways, the woman was telling me that there are so many old people here, and that they really just live too long, which I found funny. She said they are very demanding, and not able to do much of anything, but that it was the easiest jobs for foreigners to find, because once again, there’s so many of them. I guess maybe part of the reason for this is the socialized health care and all the government programs, because I noticed that most of the top countries on the list had universal health care. But is that really the life you want? Personally, when I get to zombie status, I prefer just to go on. I don’t want to sit on buses all day, staring into the souls of everyone coming and going. It would be one thing if this class of “super-old” people were living wonderful lives, enriching the world, but they’re just riding buses all day. Or apparently complaining to personal caretakers, no doubt using taxpayer’s money to cover the expense.
I tell you now, in print, that when I get to that age and condition, please don’t do extra things to keep me alive. I don’t want some girl a quarter of my age blogging about my zombie status. Just let me go.
Ciao for now,
Kathleen
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