We old people are often given an impossible task. Marketers, newspapers, cable TV companies, news stations, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers, etc., they all absolutely hate us. They give us these impossible tasks. As a public service to vendors and others who deal with us seniors, here are some things seniors can’t do:

1. Seniors can’t pick up the phone before you hang up, unless you’re a telemarketer.

2. Seniors can’t read the fine print on prescription drug bottles, instructions for safe use, or the dosage of non-prescription drugs.

We can’t read the instructions to assemble that bamboo bird cage (not because it’s in Chinese but because the font size is minus 6).

We can’t read any of the fine print flying across the TV screen or printed in fancy magazines that tells us that the suggested medication can cause diarrhea, nausea, dizziness, and sore gums.

We also can’t read the terms of leasing or buying that new car on TV or in newspaper ads.

3. We can’t listen to the news when they lower their voices or decide to babble like they do every day on our Twin Falls station, on news stations, and in the case of dramas, on regular TV shows.

4. We cannot see bad news. (Anyway, I can’t. My wife always changes the channel.)

5. We can’t lift more than 5 pounds, so don’t suggest 15-pound barbells to help us “get our muscles back into shape.”

6. We can’t open packages that contain things we really want to get our hands on, like a new TV remote, a DVD, an electric car, a CD player.

Plastic is so thick that our carpet blades won’t even cut through it.

Get this, packaging engineers: old folks don’t have acetylene torches.

7. We can’t follow the instructions to install that shed in the backyard.

We have to go back and delete Part 100653 and put in Part 100458, then put in Part 100653 again, etc.

This always takes 45 minutes.

The shed is supposed to go up in 3 hours.

It takes us 3 days if we can get our kids to “take charge” and finish the project.

8. We can’t see what’s on TV because of the brainless idiots on the cable company’s TV guide channel.

A field of just two channels runs across the bottom of our screen while tweets distract us from looking at the bottom of the screen.

The two channels take 5 seconds to go through and reveal two more channels.

One blink and you have to start over.

In addition, you have to see all the digital listings pass before the analog channels reappear.

That’s why I hate my cable company even if they have really nice employees who don’t want me to switch to you know what. (I had one of those things on top of my house and the cable guy took it down and checked it in his truck. I never got a check for that thing.)

I want to get back the old screen showing a full screen of analog channels and nothing else.

I know. If I added the digital channels I would not have this problem. It could click like you-know-what. Well, I’ll tell you a secret. That doesn’t work for me. When I’m at my grandchildren’s house, they have to find the right channel for me. (They always find something they like more than what I want to see).

Well, if I switch to satellite I’ll have fewer problems.

(PS: My cable company doesn’t respond to hate mail.)

9. We don’t understand why millions of companies are selling the MedicareRx prescription drug plan.

When we get to the pharmacy, we realize that they either don’t take “your plan”, you can’t get the drugs anyway due to medical gibberish, and that our drugs are in Tier 3, which have a higher co – pay than our old plan.

(We know the President loves the plan. That’s why we can’t love President Bush.)

10. We cannot copy that telephone number that we must call to obtain Great Battles of World War II for only $9.95.

We wait 25 minutes to get the number and blink before finding our pen won’t write (which we tried on the newspaper while waiting).

So, let’s summarize:

Older people cannot see as much as young people.

Older people cannot hear as well as young people.

The old cannot think as fast as the young.

Older people cannot memorize as fast as young people.

Older people cannot move as fast as young people.

The elderly have distracting aches and pains.

Are they great communicators writing all this?

The end