Rethinking Aging (5)
Your audio-and-text option:
Listen to Maks’s story as you read it (below).
Maks straightened the lamp, ensuring the light fell perfectly over the mahogany desk. He felt a familiar surge of purpose.
For 30 years, his red pen had been the final gatekeeper for complex annual reports and budgetary proposals. Now, he was going to guide his grandson, John, toward a career launch in ‘Digital Interface Design.’
“Sit up straight, John,” Maks instructed gently. “This is a serious document. You need to present yourself as dependable.”
John, 25, pushed his laptop across the desk. Maks peered at the screen. The format was minimal — no formal header, no objective statement, just lists of what looked like acronyms and software names.
Maks retrieved his best red pen from the brass cup and leaned closer.
“First, this language,” Maks began, tapping the screen. “‘Leveraging SwiftUI for scalable UX.’ John, you’re applying to a corporation, not a poetry society. You need action verbs. Delete the jargon and use phrases like, ‘Spearheaded cost-saving initiatives’ or ‘Managed departmental synergy.’“
John shifted in his chair. “Grandpa, ‘UX’ is ‘user experience.’ They look for specific terms to match the job description because that’s the technology I’ll be using.”
“Nonsense,” Maks replied, his tone warm but firm. “HR filters for maturity. You need to demonstrate respect for convention. This entire section here, where you discuss ‘agile sprints’ — delete it. It sounds frenetic. We want stability.”
He spent another 20 minutes, meticulously advising John to replace the modern, clean font with the authoritative Times New Roman. He insisted on a header with a full, physical mailing address and phone number, arguing that the recruiter needed to see a stable home base.
Finally, he closed the laptop gently. “Now, the final touch, the most important part of presentation.” Max stood and walked toward the coat closet. “I have my old dot matrix printer up in the attic. You will print this on thick, cream-colored linen paper. That quality stock tells the employer you take this seriously. It conveys substance.”
John didn’t meet Max’s eyes. “Grandpa, thank you. You’ve been incredibly helpful.”
He paused, searching for the right words. “... But the application is only accepted as a PDF uploaded to a web portal. The system is set up to read digital text.”
Maks froze, halfway to the closet. He slowly turned around, the weight of the moment settling on him not as anger but as a profound, cold stillness.
The system is set up to read digital text.
His carefully considered advice — the decades of professional discipline, the hard-won knowledge of formal corporate etiquette — had been rendered instantly obsolete by a simple technological reality: the web form. His entire, rigorous process, which once symbolized professional success, was now meaningless.
He looked at John, realizing he had been trying to guide a jet plane using the navigation rules for a steamship.
“The form,” Maks repeated quietly. “It rejects the paper.”
“It doesn’t even see the paper, Grandpa,” John clarified gently. “It just reads the code.”
Maks walked back to the desk. He didn’t touch the red pen. He looked down at the smooth, dark screen of the laptop, a window into a universe whose rules he no longer knew. He saw his own reflection — meticulous, serious, and utterly out of time.
He put his red pen back in the brass cup. The hardest part of aging, Maks realized, wasn’t losing strength but losing context.
“You should use your own judgment, John,” Max allowed, his voice level and final. “You know the code for this new world better than I do.”
Maks left the laptop open on the mahogany desk, a quiet acknowledgement that his involvement in John’s professional life had ended, not with an argument but with the silent, decisive certainty of a digital world.
He chose acceptance, finding solace in the necessary silence.
Also hear and read this “parent story” from 2024:
Go to “Cal Gives Up the Car”
Age: Our greatest asset!
Jim Hasse, ABC, GCDF retired, author of “52 Shades of Graying”
Weekly Stories About Aging Well
“It’s impossible not to love someone whose story you’ve heard.” - Mary Lou Kownacki
Stories about addressing ageism.
Stories about handling ableism.
Stories about thriving during the second half of life.
Accolade: “Love reading your stories. You never disappoint.” - Mary K.
How to use “My Latest Legacy Nugget” resources to share
your “52 Shades of Graying” comment with a family member or friend.
Template for “My Latest Legacy Nugget” note - birthday
Template for “My Latest Legacy Nugget” note - graduation day
Template for “My Latest Legacy Nugget” note - holiday greeting
Template for “My Latest Legacy Nugget” note - special day
Template for “My Latest Legacy Nugget” note - wedding anniversary
Template for “My Latest Legacy Nugget” note - wedding day
See all past issues of “52 Shades of Graying.”
See all past chats of “52 Shades of Levity.”
Check guidelines for your “52 Shades of Graying” Discussion Group.
I’m thankful I don’t have to:
* Balance our check book every month
* Go to our credit union to cash a check from my employer every two weeks
* Make sure I have gobs of cash on hand to pay for everyday purchases in an economy without credit cards
* Struggle with gathering expenses from my own feeble filing system at tax time.
I’m lucky to live in a time when the everyday world compensates – quite competently – for my incompetency.
* Which of your time-tested routines of ‘doing things’ are no longer useful in the second quarter of the 21st century?”