A wiser elder who is a fool

Six weeks later on my Stanford University “meet-the-real-you” online course, I am faced with my Wiser Elder. Forgive me if I roll my eyes. I am a wiser elder, I know, as I virtually meet the thirtysomethings on Zoom tonight to dissect how their Wise Ones kicked in when they handled the nasty people who – I believe – troll you on Reddit.

I only Facebook and Twitter wants a password I can’t remember. Tinder remembers me, but I dropped my phone last week and can only swipe left, implying men are all trolls now. But my trolls are not nasty. I know, because Dead Hubby bought me a magnificently illustrated book on them – and fairies. But this is about trolls… My trolls will avoid you at all cost.

Nary a nasty word spoken as he hides in some dark hovel with his whole family underneath some ancient bridge. So for me, trolls must always have been homeless. That’s the only people I’ve ever seen making a mess under the Joe Slovo bridge near Yeoville. And they’re lazy, the book tells me.

Like the Joe Slovo homeless, if I believe the letters writers on this exact page, who troll them to “get a job”. My Wiser Elder years ago thought I should sponsor 20 oneman tents so my Joe Slovo sloths can weather the weather – and their blankets and copper-wire fires are less “messy”. But the same printed trolls would crucify me for land expropriation, surely.

So, in my wisdom, I’ll make my Wiser Elder the permanent fixture rather; not the tents. But here’s the Stanford life lesson: how do you reach the sage stage of the older and wiser you? Dare I roll my eyes again? I am older and a fool.

I’ll be the only silver-backed gorilla making an ass of herself at the office’s year-end party wearing a wide skirt mouthing “Oe-oe-oe” with full red lips to You’re the One That I Want in a “band-playoff” that my Wise One baulks at. As for the wise in me? Stanford asks: “If I look back on my life, what do I want to become now?”

I’m looking back on my life already. You really want me to write my own eulogy, neh? And if I was wise, you would’ve read my eulogy now. Not my unborn child’s.