I've noticed something very odd about elderly women and signs. It's hard not to, with my newspaper carrier job - both old ladies and signs are pretty ubiquitous and by extension, so are little old ladies with signs. Some of the signs actually make me cackle: signs like the weathered wooden arrow pointing the way to Memory Loss Lane, or the notification hanging on an apartment door, when the tenant's taking a nap, which reads "Do not disturb the already disturbed. The rest of your life is your choice."
Then there's the inspirational type signs, about believing in miracles and various religious figures' affection for whoever's reading the sign and so on. Kittens clinging to branches, captioned "Hang in there!" That sort of thing.
Most of the old ladies, and the occasional aged gentlemen, have talked with me at some point or other, and here's where it gets interesting. The folks with the funny, almost invariably peculiar or grumpy signs, are my favourites. They're the ones who greet me with observations that aren't complaints and laugh at their problems rather than kvetching - or if they kvetch, they're funny as hell about it. I don't know any of them well enough to presume to say who's a better person, who's kinder, who's braver, that sort of thing but I do have very definite opinions on who's more pleasant to chat with, and it sure isn't the Saccharine Inspirational Signs sorts.
Basically, the more sugarily positive someone's signs (or bumper stickers or whatever) are, the more likely they seem to be to bond by being curmudgeons. This changes a bit if the people involved are younger, primarily because I haven't run into as many middle-aged people with signs tacked up all over, but going by bumper stickers and tee shirts it seems pretty accurate.
And then you get to the teens-through-thirties. We have the internet. I mean, everyone has the internet but it's largely a young person's affair. The internet, mind you, is awesome - sure, stupidity abounds, but it provides a never before seen uncensored forum for, well, everything anyone can figure out how to upload. A lot of that, it turns out, are memes, which have evolved a subspecies relating not to entertainment or politics but rather to personal issues like being single or having issues with work or studies.
On one hand, venting can do the mind good. On the same hand, which must be pretty busy, immense reassurance lies in knowing you aren't alone and even more so in being able to share a laugh at your woes with those who share them.
This is unequivocably awesome, in theory. In practice, this sort of meme turns into a wallowing pit. People adopt a meme and revel in not being alone, especially if the meme in question is Forever Alone, and, thus absolved of responsibility - because hey! they aren't that odd! they're in good company, right? - they proceed to tread water, or maybe roll around in it with wild abandon. It's just like the grannies bonding over their bad knees, idiotic sons- and daughters-in-law, and the shameful state of the modern US.
It's not the fact that people complain that bothers me. It's the self-indulgent complacency of these cults of negativity which spring up when venting turns into wallowing, which I define as "complaining a lot but not doing anything about it" and that is the crux of the matter. Yes, there's comfort in sharing your problems, but while alleviating the symptoms of misery it does nothing for the root cause. Don't just sit around and gripe, go DO something about it - if nothing else because if I see one more whiny Forever Alone or hear one more person kvetch that he never gets to talk to his granddaughter, while making no effort to CALL her, I'm going to...
...I'm going to go online and whine about it.
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