On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk (5 page)

CHAPTER 5
Can Really, Really Old People Be Jerks?

Scientifically proving that people can be jerks as young as maybe age six got me thinking. We all know that older kids, teenagers and adults can be idiots and jerks. Nobody disputes that. But what about old people? I'm talking
really
, really old people. Is there an age at which jerkitude generally declines? Does extreme age affect a jerk's ability, energy and ingenuity? Where do really, really old people sit on the scale from idiot to complete jerk?

It seems kind of awful to research whether a great-grandmother pushing a walker is a jerk. But
can
she be one? How about that ancient toothless guy in a wheelchair? Can
he
be a jerk? In the interests of science, I took my research to another level for this groundbreaking study.

CASE STUDY #3
The Nursing Home Manly Man

Subjects
: Really, really old people

Laboratory
: St. Hilda's Health and Home Care Facility

Experiment:
My great-grandmother lives in this very nice nursing home. All the people there have their own rooms, but there's a main dining room where they go for meals and a “social room” where they have bingo, sing-alongs, yoga, you name it. Great-Gran is eighty-nine, and she's got a busier social life than I do.

My family visits her every Sunday for about twenty hours. Once we've talked with her a bit and told her what we're doing in school, there's not a lot to do. But on this particular Sunday I had a plan. My scientific mission was to observe the behavior of all these seemingly innocent, sweet old folks. Were there jerks among them?

Observations:
After we've talked a little with my great-grandmother, my dad, my brother and I go to play shuffleboard in the social room, like we always do when Mom, Grandma and Great-Gran get talking. As we played, I looked around. People playing cards. People watching
TV
. No cheating or gossiping or bad behavior at all. No jerks in sight. Nothing happening. I sigh and put my notepad away in my pocket.

Now, I understand that you have to be patient in scientific observation, like those people who squat in African rain forests for thirty years, interacting with the gorillas. I get that. But I'm feeling like it would take a lot longer than that to get some research done in this place. I begin to think that jerkish behavior might take a lot of energy, and that very old people might be too tired and worn out to be jerks.

Then a very old guy with a cane stumps into the room and stops. He stares at us. One of those long, unblinking stares that makes people uncomfortable. It doesn't help that he has watery, reddish eyes and a peeling, spotty head. It is an ancient, tortoise-like stare.

“THOSE CHILDREN THERE,” he calls loudly to my dad, gesturing at us with his cane, “ARE THEY BOYS OR ARE THEY GIRLS?”

We all freeze.

“BOYS,” my dad says cheerfully. “THEY'RE BOYS.” I can tell he thinks the old guy must not be able to see very well.

The old man kind of snorts and limps in to get a closer look at us. I feel like a zoo animal. He studies us with his old, bleary eyes. He leans in so close I can smell his oldness.

“BOYS, EH? YOU'D NEVER KNOW IT!” he bellows in disgust. “LA-DI-DAH LONG HAIR… LOOK LIKE WIMMIN, THE BOTH OF THEM.”

Joe and I look at each other, startled. Our hair is cool.

“WELL, YEAH, THEY MIGHT BE DUE FOR HAIRCUTS,” shouts my dad, looking down and trying not to laugh. We will
never
hear the end of this one.

“HOW OLD ARE THEY?” The old guy cuts him off belligerently. Hey, pal, we're
right here
. I hate it when adults talk about you like you're not there when you're
right there
.

There is a long, loud and very tedious conversation between Dad and the old guy about our ages. And about how the old guy wasn't skipping around with girly hair playing sissy games when he was eight or thirteen. He was threshing wheat and building barns and plowing fields and fighting in wars and being a decent, short-haired, manly man.

We manage to escape from the old guy (who, incidentally, shouts after us, “IS THAT HOW YOUNG MEN
RUN
THESE DAYS??”) and get around the corner before Dad bursts out laughing. It is very unprofessional. Dad is still wiping his eyes when we get back to Great-Gran, and I ask her about the old guy.

“Oh, you mean Angus,” she says knowingly, nodding her head. “Cane, scabby head, SHOUTS?” Apparently, she's known him for about eighty years. She laughs when I tell her about our meeting with him.

“Well, what do you expect? Everyone knows he's a cranky old jerk. Always was.”

Conclusions:
The old guy was a complete jerk. Therefore, very, very old people can be jerks.

It is not mean to think of old people being jerks. We sometimes assume that all old people are nice and kind. But think about it. Old people are just
us
, only way,
way
older. The mean kid from school who steals gum from the nice people that own the corner store? He's going to be really, really old someday. A really, really old jerk.

Four generations of Murphys agreed that the old guy was a jerk. And apparently his sister, who lives there as well and who I didn't have the pleasure of meeting, is a real jerk as well. It got me thinking about how some families tend to breed jerks. It gave me the idea for my next chapter. Read on.

CHAPTER 6
Jerks in the Family

Normal families are all alike, but every jerkish family is jerkish in its own way. In this chapter, we look at whether people can be born with jerkish tendencies and then pass those on to their children and grandchildren, who in turn become jerks. It would be interesting to know if last chapter's nursing-home jerk has any children, and if so, how they turned out. Short-haired jerks, I'm guessing.

It seems pretty clear that children observing the way their jerk parents act will learn those kinds of behaviors. Normal kids learn normal things from their parents, like sharing, waiting their turn in line or chewing with their mouths shut. In a similar way, jerkish kids learn jerkish things from their jerkish parents, like cheap-shotting in hockey, bragging openly or banging on aquarium glass even though there are signs saying it hurts the fish.

But how do you explain those families who have a jerk parent (or parents) and normal, nice-ish kids? Or families where the parents are super nice but one of the kids is a jerk? It must be confusing and alarming when jerks just appear in otherwise normal families—normal parents, normal brother, normal sister, then BOOM! All of a sudden you've got a jerk in the family.

Is jerkishness really just a random occurrence, like tornados or delicious food in the cafeteria? Or could it be a trait passed down from generation to generation, like brown eyes or being left-handed? There's a scientific word for this:
heredity
(which is pronounced “her-ED-ity” and not “here ditty,” as I once thought when I was much, much younger).

Dictionary time. The big, heavy
Oxford Dictionary
of English
says this:

→
heredity
noun: the passing on of physical or mental
characteristics genetically from one generation to another.

So basically, what I just said but with the word
genetically
thrown in there. That means, I believe, something to do with things in your blood. I've put the dictionary down, and I'm not opening it again.

So is jerkishness something that can actually be passed down from old relatives? If you trace a family tree back far enough, will you find ancestor jerks who have secretly passed on their jerk genes to unsuspecting future generations?

CASE STUDY #4
Rebecca's Confusing and Alarming Family

I was disappointed to discover that, other than my uncle Dave (see Chapter 11), both sides of my family are mostly boringly normal non-jerks. I really needed a more dysfunctional, jerk-ridden family to study, genetics-wise, for this project.

As if it was meant to be, Rebecca (not her real name), who sits in front of me in Language Arts, came in late for class last week, threw down her backpack and hissed, “My family is such a nightmare!” Nightmare family? This was just what I needed. I described my project to Rebecca, and we struck a bargain. Rebecca agreed to research her family tree with the help of her grandma, who lives with them. She was very clear about the research not going further than this project—in fact, she swore me to secrecy, so of course I agreed, and of course I'm even more interested in this family than I was before.

I agreed to collect egg cartons and gross compost materials for Rebecca's science project on seed growth, and to buy her a Slurpee sometime when a group of us go to the convenience store and it doesn't look like a date.

Subjects:
Rebecca and her nonna (grandma in Italian)

Laboratory:
Rebecca's house

Experiment:
To save Rebecca from writing it all down, I borrowed Rebecca's family's video camera to film the interview Rebecca had with Nonna. So just remember that I had to listen to this
twice
, once live and once typing it out. All in the interests of science…

Observations:
I had to heavily edit this interview (***indicates where I stopped and started), because, man, Nonna can talk. And it seems like there are about four thousand living members of Rebecca's family, many of whom Nonna either viciously hates and/or never speaks to. I am unsure about her scientific objectivity.

REBECCA
(
nervously, looking at the camera
). So, Nonna, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed…

NONNA
(
suspiciously
). Who's that? (
Points a finger at
the camera.
)

REBECCA
. I told you, Nonna. J.J. and I are interviewing you for research.