Old Age Jokes

One day at the office of the orthopedic specialist I work for, we had to make arrangements for an elderly patient with spinal arthritis to have a special injection. We said we would phone him with the information.

Two days later, the patient called us, concerned that he had missed our call because of his poor hearing. "I can barely hear, barely see and barely walk," he told me.

Then he added cheerfully, "Things could be worse, though. At least I can still drive."

 

 

Just before Easter I remarked to my husband that, with the children grown and away from home, this was the first year that we hadn't dyed eggs and had an Easter-egg hunt. "That's all right, honey," he said. "We can just hide each other's vitamin pills."    

Bob, age 92, and Mary, age 89, are all excited about their decision to get married. While out for a stroll to discuss the wedding they pass a drugstore. Bob suggests they go in.

 

 

Bob asks to speak to the pharmacist. He explains they're about to get married, and asks, "Do you sell heart medication?"

 

 

"Of course we do," the pharmacist replies.

 

 

"Medicine for rheumatism?"

 

 

"Definitely," he says.

 

 

"How about Viagra?"

 

 

"Of course."

 

 

"Medicine for memory problems, arthritis, jaundice?"

 

 

"Yes, the works."

 

 

"What about vitamins, sleeping pills, Geritol, antacids?"

 

 

 "Absolutely."

 

 

"Do you sell wheelchairs and walkers?"

 

 

"All speeds and sizes."

 

 

"Good," Bob says to the pharmacist. "We'd like to register for our wedding gifts here, please."

 

 

For years my sister's husband tried unsuccessfully to persuade her to get a hearing aid. "How much do they cost?" she asked one day after he had pitched the idea to her again.

"They're usually about $3,000," he said.

"Okay, well, if you say something worth $3,000," she replied, "I'll get one."

My 60-year-old mother-in-law, completing two years of wearing orthodontic braces, was in the office having them adjusted. As she sat in one of the waiting- room chairs, the teenager next to her looked at my mother-in-law in astonishment. "Wow," he said. "How long have you been coming here?"

My diminutive aunt Flora, just four feet, nine inches tall, accepted an offer to visit a health club for a free session. After being greeted heartily, she was shown where she could change and told an instructor would soon be with her.

Having changed her clothes, Aunt Flora went back to the exercise area. Along one wall she noticed a silver bar that was not in use, and decided to try her hand at chin-ups while she waited. She jumped up, barely reaching the bar, and managed to strain through two chin-ups before the instructor came to her side.

Smiling politely, the instructor said, "If you want to let go of the coat rack and follow me, I'll be glad to help you get started."

Rock concerts are a little different now than when I was younger. Recently, I went to a concert with some friends. As the band started to play a ballad, we instinctively raised our cigarette lighters, like all good rock fans I grew up with. But looking around me, I noticed that times had indeed changed.

The mostly under-25 crowd was swaying to the upraised glow of their cell phones.

 

 

Checking out of the grocery store, I noticed the bag boy eyeing my two adopted children. They often draw scrutiny, since my son's a blond Russian, while my daughter has shiny black Haitian skin.

The boy continued staring as he carried our groceries to the car. Finally he asked, "Those your kids?"

"They sure are," I said with pride.

"They adopted?"

"Yes," I replied.

"I thought so," he concluded. "I figured you're too old to have kids that small."

I was having trouble with the idea of turning thirty and was oversensitive to any signs of advancing age. When I found a prominent gray hair in my bangs, I pointed to my forehead.

"Have you seen this?" I indignantly asked my husband.

"What?" he asked. "The wrinkles?"

Turning 50 two years ago, I took a lot of good-natured ribbing from family and friends. So as my wife's 50th birthday approached, I decided to get in some needling of my own. I sat her down, looked deep into her eyes, then said I had never made love to anyone who was over 50 years old.

"Oh, well, I have," she deadpanned. "It's not that great."

I was turning 40 and decided to celebrate by fulfilling my longtime dream to go sky-diving. Before the jump, my mother and I spent the day at a festival, where we bumped into two of my cousins. They inquired about my upcoming birthday, and when I told them about my jump from 10,000 feet, I could tell they were a bit mystified.

Finally one of them remarked, "Why don't you just get your breasts done like everyone else?"

 

 

Heading off to college at the age of 40, I was a bit self-conscious about my advancing years. One morning I complained to my husband that I was the oldest student in my class.

"Even the teacher is younger than I am," I said.

"Yeah, but look at it from my point of view," he said optimistically. "I thought my days of fooling around with college girls were over."

I had been thinking about coloring my hair. One day while going through a magazine, I came across an ad for a hair-coloring product featuring a beautiful young model with hair a shade that I liked. Wanting a second opinion, I asked my husband, "How do you think this color would look on a face with a few wrinkles?"

He looked at the picture, crumpled it up, straightened it out and studied it again. "Just great, hon."

 

 

My husband was bending over to tie my three-year-old's shoes. That's when I noticed my son, Ben, staring at my husband's head.

He gently touched the slightly thinning spot of hair and said in a concerned voice, "Daddy, you have a hole in your head. Does it hurt?"

After a pause, I heard my husband's murmured reply: "Not physically."

Jim, my 40-something husband, was playing basketball with friends his age. "Pretty soon," said one of his teammates, "we'll have to count it as a basket if the ball just hits the rim."

"Yeah," Jim agreed. "It's scary when you have to look through the bottom part of your bifocals to shoot layups and the top part on jump shots."

At his 103rd birthday party, my grandfather was asked if he thought that he'd be around for his 104th.

"I certainly do," he replied. "Statistics show that very few people die between the ages of 103 and 104."

 

Having fought the battle of the bulge most of my life, I found the battle getting even harder as I approached middle age. One evening, after trying on slacks that were too tight, I said to my husband, "I'll be so glad when we become grandparents. After all, who cares if grandmothers are fat?"

His prompt reply: "Grandfathers."

To celebrate his 40th birthday, my boss, who is battling middle-age spread, bought a new convertible sports car. As a finishing touch, he put on a vanity plate with the inscription "18 Again." The wind was let out of his sails, however, when a salesman entered our office the following week.

"Hey," he called out, "who owns the car with the plate 'I ate again'?"

Because they had no reservations at a busy restaurant, my elderly neighbor and his wife were told there would be a 45-minute wait for a table.

"Young man, we're both 90 years old," he told the maitre d'. "We may not have 45 minutes."

They were seated immediately.

 

 

I was with my husband at a baseball game in Boston's Fenway Park when I decided to go get myself a hot dog. As I stood up my husband asked me to buy him a beer. The young clerk at the concession stand asked to see verification of age.

"You've got to be kidding," I said. "I'm almost 40 years old." He apologized, but said he had to insist. When I showed him my license, the clerk served me the beer. "That will be $4.25."

I gave him $5 and told him to keep the change. "The tip's for carding me," I said.

He put the change in the tip cup. "Thanks," he said. "Works every time."

My husband, a big-time sports fan, was watching a football game with our grandchildren. He had just turned 75 and was feeling a little wistful. "You know," he said to our grandson, Nick, "it's not easy getting old. I guess I'm in the fourth quarter now."

"Don't worry, Grandpa," Nick said cheerily. "Maybe you'll go into overtime."

My grandfather has a knack for looking on the bright side of life. Even after receiving the terrible diagnosis that he had Alzheimer's, he was philosophical.

"There's one good thing that'll come from this," he told my father.

"What's that?" asked Dad.

"Now I can hide my own Easter eggs."

Fans of '60s music, my 14-year-old daughter and her best friend got front-row tickets to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert. When they returned home, my daughter said, "During the show, we looked back and saw hundreds of little lights swaying to the music. At first we thought the people were holding up cigarette lighters. Then we realized that the lights were the reflections off all the eyeglasses in the audience."

I had just had my 50th birthday and found the decade marker traumatic. When I went to get my driver's license renewed, a matter-of-fact woman typed out the information, tested my vision, snapped the camera and handed me a laminated card with my picture on it.

"You mean I have to look at this for the next four years?" I jokingly said to her.

"Don't worry about it," she replied. "In four years it'll look good to you."

Curious when I found two black-and-white negatives in a drawer, I had them made into prints. I was pleasantly surprised to see they were of a younger, slimmer me taken on one of my first dates with my husband.

When I showed him the photographs, his face lit up. "Wow! It's my old Plymouth."

 

 

Just as she was celebrating her 80th birthday, our friend received a jury-duty notice. She called to remind the people at the clerk's office that she was exempt because of her age.

"You need to come in and fill out the exemption forms," they said.

"I've already done that," replied my friend. "I did it last year."

"You have to do it every year," she was told.

"Why?" came the response. "Do you think I'm going to get younger?"

Now that I'm over 40, younger teammates have begun to tease me about my declining abilities as a softball player. During one game, I was playing third base when a batter ripped a shot over my head. I leapt as high as I could, but the ball tipped off the end of my glove and fell safely for a hit.

At the end of the inning, I was heading for the dugout when our left fielder caught up with me. "That much!" he called, holding his thumb and forefinger a couple of inches apart.

"I know," I replied. "I almost had it."

"No," he said. "I mean that's how far you got off the ground."

Our dear friend Trudy attended my husband's birthday party. Though she's been through a lot—including a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery—Trudy was the life of the party as usual. Hugging her good-bye, I couldn't help noticing she had nothing on under her blouse.

"Trudy, you're not wearing a bra!" I whispered.

With a twinkle in her eye she replied, "I may be 70, honey, but they're only 15."

For my grandmother's 80th birthday, we had a huge family celebration and even managed to get a photo announcement printed in the local paper. "That was a nice shot," I commented.

"It's my passport picture," she revealed.

"Really?" I stared in amazement at my homebody grandma. "Where did you go?"

"Walgreens," she replied.

 

 

My 20th high-school class reunion was held at a hotel on the same night that another school's tenth-year reunion was taking place. While my friends and I were in the rest room talking, some unfamiliar women entered.

After their stares became uncomfortable, we turned toward them. One of the women said, "Don't mind us. We just wanted to see how we'd look in another ten years."

My brother and his wife started their family in their early 40s. One day my sister-in-law and I were commiserating about the effects of time marching on.

"I just got my first pair of glasses," she said, and paused as her two preschool boys thundered past her. "Now, if only my hearing would go."

I was having lunch with several thirty-something friends when talk turned to the dismal prospect of our growing older.

"Well, judging by my mother," I said, "at least my hearing will improve. My mother can hear my biological clock ticking from 200 miles away."

The summer after college graduation, I was living at home, fishing in the daytime, spending nights with my friends—generally just hanging out. One afternoon my grandfather, who never went to college, stopped by.

Concerned with how I was spending my time, he asked about my future plans. I told him I was in no hurry to tie myself down to a career.

"Well," he replied, "you better start thinking about it. You'll be thirty before you know it."

"But I'm closer to twenty than to thirty," I protested. "I won't be thirty for eight more years."

"I see," he said, smiling. "And when will you be twenty again?"

My husband and I, married 13 years, were dressing for a party. I'd spent all day getting a haircut and permanent, then as we were leaving, we met in the hall and he said nothing. I complained that he had not even noticed my hair. "You used to pay attention to every little thing, and now you don't notice anything! You take me for granted!"
My husband stood there rubbing his face as he let me rant and rave. Then it hit me: He'd shaved off his six-month-old beard.

After working for months to get in shape, my 42-year-old husband and I hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. At the end of two grueling days, we made it back to the canyon's rim. To celebrate, we each bought an "I hiked the canyon" T-shirt.

About a month later, while my husband was wearing his shirt, a young man approached him. "Did you really hike the canyon?" he asked.

My husband beamed with pride and answered, "Sure did!"

"No kidding!" the fellow said. "What year?"

A few years ago, I opened the invitation to my cousin's 100th birthday party. On the front—in bold letters—it screamed, "If he's heard it once, he's heard it a hundred times. Happy Birthday, Sam!"

When a woman I know turned 99 years old, I went to her birthday party and took some photos. A few days later, I brought the whole batch of prints to her so she could choose her favorite.

"Good Lord," she said as she was flipping through them, "I look like I'm a hundred."

 

 

One of the English classes I taught at Deltona high school in Florida consisted of a particularly well-motivated group of juniors. Students felt free to ask questions on any subject that concerned them.

One afternoon a girl raised her hand and asked me to explain all the talk about a woman's "biological clock." After I'd finished, there was a moment of silence, and then another hand shot up.

"Mrs. Woodard," a student asked, "is your clock still ticking, or has the alarm gone off?"

 

 

Out bicycling one day with my eight-year-old granddaughter, Carolyn, I got a little wistful. "In ten years," I said, "you'll want to be with your friends and you won't go walking, biking, and swimming with me like you do now."

Carolyn shrugged. "In ten years you'll be too old to do all those things anyway."

I had laryngitis and finally decided to go to the doctor. After the nurse called for me, she asked my age. "Forty-nine," I whispered.

"Don't worry," she whispered back. "I won't tell anyone."

During the last days of my mother's life, we discussed many things. One day I raised the topic of her funeral and memorial service.

"Oh, honey," she responded, "I really don't care about the details."

Later she woke from a nap and grasped my hand, clearly wanting to share something with me. As I leaned forward, she said urgently, "Just don't bury me in plaid."

After a shopping expedition, my friend Gina and I stopped in a local bar for a drink. We hadn't been seated long when she leaned over and said that four young men at the next table were watching us. Since we're both thirty-something, married with children, we found the situation flattering. We sat a little straighter and tried to look slimmer and younger.

In a few minutes, one of the men got up and came toward our table. "Excuse me," he said. Then he reached over our heads to turn up the volume on the televised ball game.

 

 

While on maternity leave, a woman from our office brought in her new bundle of joy. She also had her seven-year-old son with her. Everyone gathered around the baby, and the little boy asked, "Mommy, can I have some money to buy a soda?"

"What do you say?" she said.

Respectfully, the boy replied, "You're thin and beautiful."

The woman reached in her purse and gave her son the money.

We invited some old friends to help celebrate my 40th birthday. My husband went out to buy a gift, and he saw some cute little music boxes. A blue one was playing "Happy Birthday to You." Thinking they were all the same, he picked up a red one and asked the clerk to have it gift-wrapped.

When we sat down to dinner, he gave it to me, asked me to open it and— surprise—out came the tune to "The old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be."

My hearing had gotten worse, and ultimately I was faced with a decision: buy a pontoon boat, which I could enjoy all summer, or get a hearing aid. The choice was obvious—to me at least. However, my sisters did not approve of the boat.

One day during lunch with them, I was having trouble following the conversation. Finally I leaned over to one of my sisters and asked what had just been said.

"You should have brought along your pontoon boat," she replied

While my friend Emily was visiting her mother, they went for a walk and bumped into an old family acquaintance. "Is this your daughter?" the woman asked. "Oh, I remember her when she was this high. How old is she now?"

Without pausing, Emily's mother said, "Twenty-four." Emily, 35, nearly fainted on the spot.

After everyone had said their good-byes, Emily asked her mother why she'd told such a whopper.

"Well," she replied, "I've been lying about my age for so long, it suddenly dawned on me that I'd have to start lying about yours too."