My little blacklist

We hear them all the time, those patronizing, insulting terms referring to seniors. Some media now have their anti-ageism stylebooks in place and are careful to avoid them, but those words are still alive and well on TV, in user-generated web content like blogs and forums, in everyday conversation, and especially in jokes. I'm not trying to be politically correct here. If you've been hearing them all your life, then when you become a senior you start believing that they now apply to you. Here are the ones that really make me cringe:

• Buzzard
• Codger
• Coot
• Crock
• Crone
• Crow
• Curmudgeon
• Feisty
• Fogey
• Fossil
• Frisky
• Geezer
• Hag
• Spry
• Zoomer

Yes, Zoomer too. I hate that term. It's purely a marketing concoction. Convince seniors that it's not okay to grow old, you have to fight it, and here are all the gadgets, clothes, trips, cosmetics, and surgical procedures you can buy to keep pretending you're young.