I’m more irritated than an ingrown hair on a wooly mammoth over the recent ageism campaign by the woke left.

Why just the other day my wife Greta and I joined my best friend and neighbour Mr. Wong for an early-bird special dinner. By god, I’ll be damned, that I didn’t even recognize my old Chinese pal. He looked fine, despite letting his entire head of hair go silver. Greta complimented him and said that she was doing the same. That’s when I looked over and noticed wisps of grey on her head. 

They both proudly ordered their meatloaf special and Lime Rickeys, as I slumped in my chair embarrassed to be seen with these two old geezers! 

The Current ‘The Current Thing’

That’s when Mr. Wong informed me that advertisers such as Dove, the fast food joint Wendy’s, and even the beloved Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue were campaigning to encourage oldies like us to start looking our age.

“Wendy should spend more time worrying about obesity than my butterscotch-coloured roots!” I grumbled. 

Mr. Wong told me that after he’d stopped dying his hair all his coworkers at the local school were fawning over him. “They call me the silver fox,” he said, while Greta nodded in agreement. Back in Wuhan, Mr. Wong worked in a top secret lab, but over here the only lab he gets into is at the local high school to clean the floors. 

Greta clarified all this grey matter by explaining that a national news anchor, Lisa LaFlamme, had been canned for letting her locks fade into whiteness.

I said, “Is it Halloween or something?” as I ran my hand through my thick dark recently coated Just For Men locks. 

“Toby, you’re totally wong. We’re going grey to support women who are losing their jobs because of ageing,” added Mr. Wong. 

Greta blabbed about this MSM talking head Lisa LaFlamme like she was a modern day Walter Cronkite. Using words like trusting, graceful, and elegant. I said there’s nothing graceful about trumpeting anything the MSM has to say. From Covid to Ukraine to Black Lives Matter virtue signalling. “Shall I go on,” as I adjusted my false teeth and dug into some tasty tater tots.

LaFlamme’s Candle Has Burnt Out

Then I said: “I was perfectly happy dying my hair and was proud that I looked younger and still had to show ID to get a senior’s discount at the talkies. I mean, if there’s one thing I know it’s that marketing, Hollywood, and even the disloyal MSM have been pounding the awfulness of aging into us for years.” I looked at Mr. Wong’s hair and then looked away out of disgust. “And now they’re talking about doing a 180 and saying grey is beautiful?”

If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that nobody gets the boot for going grey and, to be honest, this LaFlamme probably burned out and had her firing coming for many reasons. The MSM is all about the next thing. “Ten years ago,” I shouted to my friends and a couple of seniors within hearing aid range, “it was about advancing women, but these days it’s about something else. I said one day even that they/them transgender who identifies as a horsefly will be old news.”

They politely disagreed, and finished their meal and gulped down their Lime Ricky’s.

“Is it a conspiracy theory,” I debated, mostly to myself. “Think about it, if a grey haired dies unexpectedly there aren’t as many questions asked. And these days an awful lot of people are dying unexpectedly.” Looking at you, Pfizer.

You see, folks, aging makes us accept death and in a world full of unexpected death, it’s no wonder that the MSM, Dove and even Wendy’s are helping to spread the message that aging is cool.

I decided enough was enough, I couldn’t take watching my people age because some fast food joint was telling them. That’s when I went to the drug store and bought all the Just For Men and Women I could and began replacing all my friend’s shampoo with it.

Well, I’ll tell you when I started seeing my friends again they all looked 20 years younger. I felt like I was living in the movie Cocoon, but instead of sucking the life out of alien eggs and playing basketball with the boyz from the hood, we were simply using over-the-counter hair dye. Eat your heart out Wilfred Brimley.

Toby Is Doing it His Way

A few weeks later, Greta and I sat in the living room, surrounded by pictures of our grandchildren, and even great grandchildren, thanks to the overturning of Roe vs Wade. Greta said, I’m not afraid of dying or even looking older.

To which I said, me neither but let’s do it our way not because some corporation tells us to. We spend enough of our life listening to their drivel.

My wife lifted herself off the sofa and put on Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” I said, “Old blue eyes. Great choice.”

“Don’t you mean grey choice,” she said. We both laughed and then sang along to the song, like we were twenty-one again. 

“For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught.” 

And that’s all the Woke I can rat unpack this week.