I NEVER ask a lady her age.
When I’m talking to others on the wiser side of retirement, I’ll play the game in my head: “Older then me” or “Younger than me”.
I must have a very good mirror, bought from the local markets, because there aren’t an awful lot of people who in my biased eye look like they’ve been born after me.
That’s what happens when you’re blessed with a soft ageless complexion, don’t drink too much and never touched a cigarette.
Wanda’s reading over my shoulder and she’s just spat half her lunch down the back of my shirt.
Scoff if you will my dearest, but I’m true to the gene my wonderful mother gave me.
“True to a mis-spent youth,” I hear Wanda muffle as she walks away, leaving me picking buts of cucumber from the top of my collar.
Nevertheless, I was talking to an elderly lady recently, and on this occasion I know this for a fact because she volunteered to me that she was now into her 80s.
The lady tells me that she’s been taking her car – the same car – to the same mechanic for 35 years.
There’s an old used-car salesman line about cars being owned by little old ladies who drive to the shops and back on Saturdays, and to church and back on Sundays.
Well, that was exactly the scenario here. And she continues to share with me that the mechanic, himself into his early 60s, picks her car up from her house on service day and leaves his own ute in her driveway.
It’s a type of old-fashioned loyalty we don’t see very often in a modern world.
I remember a time when we all used to buy the same insurance because we were part of a club, and we were consequently guaranteed mates rates.
In fact, there used to be a tiered system which rated your loyalty. Tier 1 customers were those who not only remained “no claim” customers, but they were the ones who’d been with the organisation the longest.
That’s all flipped on its head, much to the confusion of many my age as we fight the urge to stay with those we know in search of a better deal.
My children think I’m a sitting duck. They tell me my insurance providers – both house and car – are preying on my loyalty so they can charge me more and thereby boost their profits.
If they’re right, that means my loyalty has become the little white field mouse to a hungry eagle, biding its time before it swoops for an easy dinner.
Like the eagle, the insurance company knows it will need more than one mouse to fill its greedy stomach. But it’s a crafty bird, and knows the mice only get one shot.
So we either remain creatures of habit and feed the eagle who’s flipped the rules of the loyalty game, or we move to a different paddock.
It’s goes heavily against the grain. This isn’t how things used to work. We banked at the same bank, shopped with the same grocer, called in the same electrician … it’s just what we did because we knew them by name, and they ours.
And as a result of that trust we’d built up over so many years, we established relationships, asked each other about our families and quite simply assumed we were getting better service as a result.
Like the little old lady with her car, there’s a movement back to that old fashioned thought process. We’re all looking for the right mechanic, the right electrician and the right plumber who’s happy to sit down for a cup of tea after they’ve finished their work.
But they’re few and far between. And how – other than word of mouth – do we know where these people are.
Word of mouth. That’s how. Because people my age like to talk. We like to share goodwill.
And we’re getting smarter. We’re listening to our children. When the insurance companies hike their premium, we’re working as teams to ensure we find the best deal.
Be warned, greedy eagle. An army of mice is fleeing the paddock.
