Tuesday, April 04, 2006

A.C. and the Elderly

You know how when elephants are going to die (at least in the wild), they travel to a specific location, one in which other elephants have gone to die? I believe it is called an elephant burial ground. It looks like we humans are beginning to do the same thing, but instead of traveling to some remote forest in order to pass on to the next level, the elderly go to Atlantic City.

My god, what a depressing site this “vacation paradise” is. Old people trudging around with their walkers, wheel chairs, oxygen tanks … it looks, feels, and smells like a hospital, except they replace the hospital beds with slot machines. Surely time-challenged humanoids can find other more useful ways to spend their remaining years on this planet than cursing the Lucky 7’s machine all day long, can’t they?

Even Atlantic City offers more than just slots, but one hardly ever sees an older person enjoying a walk up and down the boardwalk, or taking in a nice dinner and show. Instead, they clog up the casino floor with their wheezing, coughing, and excruciatingly slow movements that make negotiating ones way through the casino much like rush hour traffic.
Maybe that is why the higher-end casinos like the Borgata or the more trendy casinos like the Tropicana are so popular – because they basically price out the aging population. I was telling my wife yesterday that it would be great for a casino to either have a young-person section or ban these old people altogether – of course the Trop’ and Borgata found a less abrasive way to solve this problem.

1 comment:

The Rev said...

And to think... I'm planning an AC trip on May 6th. That could be dangerous. I may take a drunken stumble over an oxygen tank.