Attack of the elderly hypocrites

I was never much of an outdoorsy type growing up, which meant I had to put up with a lot of old folks saying: "You kids just sit around playing television. Try going outside so you don't rot your brain! In my day..."

You get the idea.

Well, every few years, my paper decides to punish its oldest, most loyal and crankiest readers by messing around with our TV listings. Yesterday was one of those times.

A while back, we killed the TV Book that appeared once a week. It saved us $60,000...and brought in a few hundred complaints. So we brought it back soon after, as a daily page of listings in the Features section. Once they got used to that, we killed it, moving all the listings into the weekly entertainment section and taking out the daytime info.

So all day yesterday, we got complaints from our senior readers who literally said things like, "What am I supposed to do, stay in bed all day waiting for prime time to roll around so I can know what's on TV?!"

No, I mean all day. Hundreds of these calls. "How DARE you remove the daytime listings?! How can I plan my day?!"

To be honest, I only took one of these calls, but I got to listen to our chosen punching bag respond all day. The one response she could never give was, "Stop watching so much damn television."

Yeah, I know, a lot of older folks don't have much to do. But come on, live a little. Waddle to the front porch and watch the deer and jackrabbits and such. This is Northern California, one of the most beautiful places on earth, and people are spending their last days in a dark room, pining to know whether it's "I married a midget" day on Jerry Springer.

To throw out a positive role model, may I present Karen's grandmother. At 92, she's one of the most alive people I know. She came out here the other day -- from Chicago, to a mountainous area where 20-year-olds get exhausted walking a block. She's in a book club, she's her church's historian, she plays Scrabble nightly, she uses e-mail, and she has sent me more cards and notes in recent years than most of my blood relatives. Since I've known Karen, her grandmother has visited Ireland, New York City and Maine (which was the 50th state she had visited in her lifetime).

So my bar for a senior lifestyle is set pretty high. I'm sure we'll hear more from disgruntled readers today, and I'm sure we'll still have to avoid the temptation to say, "How about you just go outside and enjoy the weather?!"

You see, in my day, TV only had 68 channels....