It's hard to teach a geezer if the geezer doesn't want to be taught (come to think of it, that might be true with young'uns too??) Us geezers in Geezerville are up for new things once in a while. Right now I am working on two new projects.
One is pretty simple. I love to crochet (the sport of most grannies) but I've been crocheting for 3/4 of a century. I'm pretty good at it. My newby project is making items that I see in pictures without using a pattern. (Pinterest is a good source for fodder.) It's way more challenging than traditional crochet with a pattern and way more exciting too as you never know what you are going to get. I'm truly creating a one of a kind "thing" that a) has never been created before and b) will never be created again (as I don't have a pattern). It's a cool thing to do. I see a picture and the Xerox machine in my head tells my fingers what to do. It's a little miracle when my creation looks like the picture. Gee, I did that! Whooops of joy. Geezers need miracles to keep them going when a negative "something" attacks.
My other newby item is making sour dough bread. Now I've not made any yet, but I've been feeding my starter. Rick gave me a small bottle of 116 year old sour dough starter with verbal directions on what to do. This is precious stuff. It's lasted 116 years, making lo and behold millions of loaves of sour dough bread and he entrusted it to me, the geezer who can kill plants in a single bound.
After getting over the awe of 116 year old starter, I immediately forgot the directions. YouTube to the rescue. As my brother says, "if you want to know how to do anything, go to YouTube." YouTube is every geezer's friend as it is our online memory for everything we've forgotten. By the time you get to geezer-hood, that's a lot of online memory. I searched for sour dough starter and found at least a thousand videos on what to do. Don't worry about picking the right video, as I found out they all say about the same thing. I know...I saw ALL of them.
After seeing the videos I started feeding my starter. Thank goodness it's not a greedy eater. Equal amounts of flour and water will work. I've been dutifully feeding my starter and it should be ready by tomorrow. Then I have to figure out how to bake the bread. Come back later and find out how I did. I already know YouTube will be there.
I'm not the only oldie seeking newby knowledge. One geezer I know created a vertical micro-gardening wall on the side of her house. Her eye-level planter box is filled with herbs and other goodies. When she needs fresh salad fixings she goes to her own private garden where everything is fresh and yummy. She's using her noggin.
Other geezers, wanting to do something far more exciting than watching plants grow or yeast rise--are playing with their Razors...not the kind for your face or legs, but the kind you drive. The newby Razor geezers go to the "shape up" in the morning and follow each other to local desert formations seeking thrills and adventure. The geezers with Razors are having a grand time roaming around finding relics from the past. Some geezers decorate their yards with bleached bones from the Pleistocene, others specialize in old mining equipment rusting (resting?) away. Don't forget the rock hound Razor riders. Finding the perfect geode or piece of manmatite makes their day. There's lots of stuff you can find in a desert, including your newly defined self, when you are on a Razor. You can also get into some mean dust, dirt and mud. When the geezers come home with their treasures, they are covered with grit, grime, mud, dust and smiles. How wonderful is that?
The bottom line--geezers can be taught new tricks but only if they wanna be taught. We have the time; we have the background (remember we were the doctors, lawyers and chiefs in our previous non-geezer incarnation); and now we have the place to fulfill some dreams that were not possible way back when.
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