stop playing the “old & senile” card. i’m on to you.

Last week Hubby and I attended a charity banquet here in town.  Before the dinner they had a silent auction that contained lots of fabulous baskets and items that people had donated.  This was our second year attending the banquet and, having a year to think it over, we came with a plan: already prepared to spend x amount of dollars we would spend half on the silent auction and the other half we’d give during the love offering at the end.

We walked around, bumped into friends, checked out the loot.  I found a gift bag from Dean & Deluca that I wanted and Hubby found a stack of puzzles that the kids would like.  You can see our priorities – I want coffee and raw honey and he wants to play with the kids.  Seeing that his priorities were more honorable than mine I agreed that we should bid on the puzzles and games.  Being the nice Hubby that he is, he suggested we spend all our money on the silent auction and bid on both items.  So a few minutes before the silent auction ended we put down our bids on the items and hovered to make sure no one outbid us at the last minute.

Joel, the emcee with a very loud voice, hollered “Time!  Put down your pencils!”  And we won both items!  I got the gourmet coffee and the kids got puzzles and a light-up solar system.  Then Hubby nudged me.  “Look at her!” he half-whispered.

I turned around and saw her — an elderly woman with perfectly-coiffed gray hair, a prim floral jacket, expensive and tasteful gold jewelry — writing a bid on our puzzles.  After Joel had clearly said “Pencils down” and the rest of the people in the room walked into the dinner.  Then the woman walked over to place her bid on something else when she got busted by one of the organizers.  I told Hubby to scratch out her bid, her illegal bid, but Hubby said that we were going to be honorable and not stoop to her level.  I hate it when he is more mature than me.

Last Friday we went out to eat with our friends James and Erin.  They took us to Willie’s in El Dorado and arriving at 6 o’clock on a Friday night meant we had to wait a while for a seat.  The four of us were standing by the door waiting on our table, standing next to a group of two who were also waiting for a table, when out of the corner of my eye I saw two elderly people – a lady with perfectly-coiffed gray hair and a prim lavender jacket and her husband – walk past us.  They stopped and looked at us for a moment then walked over to a clean table and sat down.  That table was for the people in front of us, that table had only recently been cleaned, and the host was about to walk over and tell the two-some in front of us to sit there.  And the old people took it!  Rude.

Look, Old Ladies With Perfectly-Coiffed Hair, I get it that you have lived for a long time and are tired of putting up with it.  But just because you are old does not mean you can steal my kids’ puzzles or my table at dinner.  It’s just rude.