You may be aware of a lovely poem by Jenny Josephs called “Warning”, the first line being “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple….”. I love this poem but have been meaning to rewrite it for a while now as I have ideas of my own for when I get old. Here is my version;
Beware!
When I get old I shall buy the biggest, reddest mobility scooter I can find.
And drive it recklessly around Sainsbury’s and make everyone jump out of the way and spend my pension on a CB radio and monster ariel to go with it.
And sit in the park interfering with the emergency radio frequencies, drinking vodka wrapped in Tesco bags and say we have no money for Sky Sports.
I will ride my scooter along pavements and down one-way streets the wrong way and when I am tired I will crash into fences and lamposts and not give a hoot.
I will honk my horn at anyone who gets in the way and make up for all those years with “nil points” on my licence.
I shall go out on my scooter in the rain and terrorise pedestrians by splashing through puddles and will hog the commuter lane during rush hour.
I will wear polyester trousers and floral blouse with my Hushpuppies and visit the Post Office and Sandwich Bar ONLY at lunchtimes.
I will take ages to count my pension and order my stamps and I will be dithery and confused and hold up queues of workers in their lunch hour before popping into Argos to pinch those lovely blue pens which match the red ones I get from the Bookies.
But now I can only plot my revenge and must behave myself until the time comes.
I must talk to my friends on Facebook and read “The Rules of Work” from cover to cover.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now so that you won’t be surprised and shocked when I am arrested for “Driving my buggy under the affluence of incohol”.
Poppyposts 
I love this. I could see the picture in my mind of you “terrorizing” your community with your scooter. I could hardly keep from laughing out loud. So creative and full of fun. Thanks for the wakeup moment of joy.
Joy
Thank you Joy-I’m glad you like it. It is a serious ambition of mine to terrorize my community with a mobility scooter, just as others do the same to me now! We have someone who whizzes round our local Sainsbury’s supermarket at breakneck speed and if it wasn’t so dangerous it would be quite amusing watching the shoppers scatter! She has been reported many times….I want to be that rebel! Take care X
What a blast! I laughed out loud as I read your rendition of “When I get Old.” I could see myself joining you in terrorizing the streets and supermarkets of our respective communities. Very humorous and well written. Thanks for contributing to my laughs for the day.
I’m gathering quite an “inspiration page” that follows me every day now. I keep it in a spread sheet along with all of my other blogging notes but started it only recently. On it, I have special things that make me realize how wonderful life is.
It includes art, poems, quotations and general wisdom that speak to me. And now I’ve added not just one, but two entries thanks to your post here Sis. Truly inspirational.
Your re-write is intertwined with the original as only Excel would do having cut and pasted both from their web pages. An accident, perhaps, but a wonderful one. Each has their own colour and font, and they are separated by a few columns, but they blend wonderfully.
Thanks Caroline for all of your inspiration. And thanks to everyone else out there too.
– Phoenix