Jami vs the Elderly Shoppers

I'm all for respecting the old - surviving this cruel world for 7 or 8 decades or more is an accomplishment, no doubt. I'd hope that anyone reaching that age would have some wisdom to share, not just having lived the lessons, but also with the perspective that time brings. However . . . In a store the other day, an incident started with a common sight: an elderly woman inspecting the wealth of options for one particular product had parked her cart perpendicular to the aisle, basically blocking all traffic. Indeed the selection is baffling and often overwhelming, but one doesn't need to stop everyone else's progress whileone deciphers the meaning of the labels. As I mentioned, this I've seen often. It's usually resolved with a polite "Excuse me", although, really, regardless of age, you should be able to understand that you don't park sideways. Anyhow, this situation got worse; the nice white-haired lady was reading the labels aloud to her clearly hard-of-hearing hubby. "MOUNTAIN BREEZE!! This one is called Mountain Breeze, but it doesn't say Ultra like that other one. This one is RAIN FRESH. It's utlra, but I don't know what this symbol means, see? What does this mean??" People on both sides were saying "Excuse me!" in increasingly loud tones, and one woman attempted to move their cart for them, only to realize that with the display nearby, she'd have to either knock it down or bump them. I could almost see her contemplating the options. I was about 3 carts back, both boys in the cart and frozen veggies unfreezing as we spoke. Finally, the cart-mover bellowed "EXCUSE ME" loud enough that the rest of us jumped and the couple finally turned. At this point, it's over, right? They'll move the cart, we'll all flow around and life will be grand. Nope. The traffic-blocking woman blinked at the other woman for a few seconds and said "Yes?" "Your cart is blocking the aisle." More blinking. The husband either didn't hear the problem or chose not to be involved; he returned to inspecting the shelves. After a long, tense moment, the wife moved the cart, turning it a bit, so that now it was . . . directly next to the display in the aisle that had prevented the other woman from moving it in the first place, and turned back to the task at hand. I began to back up to pull a 3-point turn; this wasn't going anywhere fast. I don't know how it ended. Finn was hungry, Eddie was on a bazillion question roll, and I wanted to get out of there by any route necessary. They may still be there now. Rudeness and simple inattentiveness is not unique to our older citizens, but I see it in that age bracket more and more, in parking lots, restaurants and more. Last year I witnessed the slowest speed collision ever as two seniors backed out of parking spaces into each other so slowly there wasn't even a noise when they hit - talk about an avoidable accident. Both got out of their cars mad at the other one. Working in the fast food industry, both my nicest and my rudest customers were the ones getting their senior discount. Perhaps the moderate die young. I don't hate seniors, I'm not against old folks in anyway, just making the observation that more often than not in recent months, when someone's being impolite or just plain oblivious, they're more likely than not to have grey hair.