The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: pmcd9 on December 29, 2008, 03:56:14 pm
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I just read a story that the Oldest American Male (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081229/ap_on_re_us/obit_oldest_american_man) has died. He was 112. I've always had a bit of morbid curiosity towards this subject. I'm always rooting for these old people to just keep on living forever.
It's kinda like a competition really.
I'm also interested because a man who lives in my neighborhood is 104 years old. He's becoming famous for being so old; I went to his birthday party (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmcd9/483161809/), but he was already famous for being a member of The Ink Spots (http://www.inkspots.ca/HUEY-LONG-PROCTOR.htm).
I checked out the Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people) and it looks like you need to be at least 110 before you even start to be a contender. Huey is pretty spry so we'll just have to see how long he last. We'll be watching to see how he does.
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I always wonder about the quality of life for super-old folks. My great-grandmother lived to about 93, but she had absolutely no idea what was going on for the last three years or so. She constantly complained that no one ever visited her, despite the fact that family visited her almost every day.
But I dunno. It probably varies quite a bit. Your man Huey looks like he's enjoying himself, Paul.
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My grandma will be 92 in a few weeks. She's still all there. She's weaker and leans forward when she walks because of some kind of spinal compression. According to friends she's not very grandmotherly. I guess because she makes sex jokes and casually swears a lot.
I remember in middle school her teaching several of my friends what PDQ means. I thought everybody knew that, like ASAP.
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I checked out the Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people) and it looks like you need to be at least 110 before you even start to be a contender.
Maybe he's already the oldest person alive who's famous for something besides being that old?
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I had a great-grandmother who lived to 102. She was alert and aware up to the end. She was able to meet my daughter, which means my daughter met her great-great grandmother (even if she was but an infant at the time).
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I just saw my great uncle over christmas, he's 94 and I haven't seen him for a couple of years. My dad had told me he'd really gone down hill but I hadn't really believed it since my dad tends to worry too much about that sort of thing. We were showing him a trailer in the backyard my dad uses to rob his hives, he then walked out (of the trailer) and looked directly at the house he'd just walked out of (where he's stayed every time he's come down for the last 20 years) to get to the trailer and asked 'So what's that building then?'.
That kind of made an impression.
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I had a great-grandmother who lived to 102. She was alert and aware up to the end. She was able to meet my daughter, which means my daughter met her great-great grandmother (even if she was but an infant at the time).
When I saw my senior year girlfriend a few years after graduation, she had a photograph with her daughter, herself, her mom, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother. It blew my mind that this baby had met her great-great-grandmother. My great-great-grandfather, by contrast, fought at Gettysburg. It wasn't so much due to solid construction as it was that each of the moms had their kid by age 20, usually years before (my girlfriend was proud that she'd beaten the mom-by-graduation trend, if only by a year or so).
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yeah, there is a weird contrast between sides of my family like that. I guess people in south america got married younger than irish people, even back several generations? that seems unlikely, but there is a big difference.
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Perhaps in South America they were more religious and felt the need to marry to fuck whereas in Ireland faith was more of a lip service thing?
You know. Because of all the booze, religion only existed for its original purpose: an excuse to murder those slightly different from you.
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Or it could be entirely due to like, two age differences. Now that I think about it and remember that my dad's parents got married pretty late for the era, and my mom's parents got married when they were... 18? 19?
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My family has had pretty slow generational turnover for a while now. My grandfather was born in 1894, my dad in 1937, me in 1969, and my boy in 2008 (sister in 2002). Average of 38 yrs. I think this just means we've been middle class since forever.