Modern science is great. It has allowed us to live longer, become stronger, abort foetuses that don't suit us too much, stave off cancer and whiten our teeth. Unfortunately, modern science and medical advancements have resulted in a rather frightening phenomenon: a plethora of old people. Everywhere I look, they are shuffling around; smelling of mothballs and wee, complaining under their breath about the good old days. I'm sure some of the more PC among you are wringing your rose-scented hands and I'm waiting until someone says, “Wait until you get old, Paul. You just wait. There'll be some snotty fuckbitch like you complaining about yourself while you piss yourself quietly in the corner, gibbering about the war.”

(Actually, you probably wouldn't have said that last sentence because it's not very PC.)

I think it boils down to the following: attitude. I remember a rather frustrating Afrikaans teacher from my high school who had an amazingly huge ass for her size and seemed to wear a rather bad wig, who had written on her whiteboard, in I assume permanent marker, the following: It is your attitude and not your aptitude that determines your altitude. Yes, it is rather twee and saccharine, but it makes sense if you rip off all the motivational piss. You may ask how you can rip piss off of something if its liquid – have you ever heard of freezers? Exactly.

The vast majority of old people I've met have been entirely uninteresting. Old men are the worst. Shorn of dignity and respect, they dodder through life assuming that they are owed some sort of kowtowing. I say – watch me run around you while I pull rude signs at you with my fingers old man, try and catch me on that walker while I hurl insults at you from my nimble lips. At least older women can act sweet. Older men just hang around with red cheeks, yellow teeth and rheumy eyes. I can understand their anger, their frustration at their de-tusking, but perhaps if they were less pissy about it, they would be easier to deal with.

Old people might very well be our connection to the past, but I've yet to meet any of them that dress like native Americans and smoke peace pipes. Most of them just drink tea, garden and read newspapers. Towards the end of last year, I went on a trip with my father to Northern England, very close to the Scottish border – to see where his grandfather came from. I can honestly say I felt nothing, as did my father. My great grandfather was a mine-foreman type person I never met who very kindly passed on his genetic material to me. Indeed, I said in my twenty first speech that I was grateful to my parents for fucking, and that gratitude extends all the way back to that girl monkey who thought that boy monkey's big pink ass was impressive all those millions of years ago, but in reality – I feel more of a pull to Africa or African landscapes than I do to rolling British hills, no matter how verdant.

Anyway, I'm babbling. Next thing I'm going to start repeating myself, forget who you are and demand that you change my adult nappy, floundering against my shrunken flanks. The point I'm trying to make is that if old people would just shut the fuck up for a while, smile and stop complaining I'm sure I'd like them a lot more. I can also assure you, hand-wringer (if you haven't navigated away to a page of bunnies and kitties 69-ing each other) that when I get old I'll do my best to stay interesting. I intend to grow old disgracefully. To shout and swear and dress funny as much as I possibly can. I understand totally that there physical changes one undergoes as one ages (such as your balls ending up around your knees) but I intend to do my best to cope with these changes (like invent a ball-bra). If I can carry on being irreverent and can hit people in the shins with my walking stick with the skull for a handle, then I should be fine. As long as I'm laughing at the time and not being a misery, fuck their shins.

Because, for god's sake, if I'm not having fun then what am I doing even bothering to be alive?

For those of you who don't believe me about old people, let's take a look at this list of pros and cons I've compiled. Get your reading glasses, dear.

Cons
The smells. (Wee, mothballs, cabbage.)
The slow-walking.
The complaining.
The slow (and dangerous) driving.
The hearkening back to old times.

Pros
If you're nice to one, they might give you a boiled sweet.

So, perhaps if we can all commit to not being boring old farts, we can at least commit to being interesting old maladies of digestive origin.

I'm going for burps and general throat gurgles.

Paul S. White Esquire.