You know the type, probably a good father or worker, but serious faced all the time, never smiles, often in a bad mood, very cynical. It’s just I feel like I’m on the path to this, I’m 28, just escaped 12 years of food service so I’m already super cynical and if someone comes up to me, I’m super ready to shut down whatever’s about to happen. I feel like working with customers for years I’ve learned to have giant walls up and I can’t seem to remove them. I see the other guys in the factory I’m working at laughing and joking all the time, I think of myself as funny but it’s always deadpan humor and I wish I could genuinely smile and laugh and make friends with the other guys. Any old timers or well travelers out there have any advice?
My grandpa lived to 93, lived through the depression, went overseas during WW2, drove a cab and various delivery trucks until he retired. He wasn’t crotchety at all, at least not that I saw, and I spent a good 7 years living just a few blocks away, so I saw him a lot. He was always cracking jokes and singing songs. Before dinner he’d often turn his knife into an instrument (use your palm to hold down the blade end against the edge of the table and flick the handle… Move it in and out to change the tone). When out to dinner he was the one blowing is straw wrapper across the dining area. He’d flop his dentures all around to ways that were silly. He even had an old fart machine made out of some steel wire, a washer, and some rubber bands.
Sometimes he’s say, “people weren’t meant to live this long”, but that’s about as dark as it got and it was normally said in a matter of fact way. He’d usually just say “getting old isn’t for wimps.”