We all know a few people who stubbornly refuse to act their age, but this guy might be the most pathetic case of arrested development we’ve ever seen: This 83-year-old still thinks he’s hip enough to know what 75-year-olds consider cool.
Oof. Just act your age, buddy!
Not a day goes by at Meadow Brooks Retirement Community that 83-year-old Mike Sterle doesn’t completely humiliate himself by acting like he’s still savvy to all the trends, fashion, and lingo of the younger 75-year-old residents. Pretty much anytime a group of 75-year-olds sits down to listen to some Bill Haley & His Comets LPs, Sterle will show up like clockwork to kill the vibe and plunge everyone into uncomfortable silence by trying to brag about how he once saw the Andrews Sisters perform live as if any of them give half a shit about that. And God forbid any of them start dancing, because Sterle will almost certainly bust out the jitterbug in a truly mortifying display of his total disconnect from 75-year-olds’ culture that leaves the whole room wincing at his colossal misfire.
It’s hard to overstate how many facepalms and exasperated sighs Sterle draws walking around the facility in his argyle socks and sweater vest outfit like he just magically stopped aging in 2013. He probably thinks he’s hot shit liking all his younger peers’ Facebook posts about how they used to drink water straight from the hose and get milk from the milkman, when in reality it comes off as so jarring and desperate that most of them just quietly block him on the spot. To make things even worse, Sterle is always creepily lurking around the orientation seminars to hang out with the newer retirees who don’t know to ignore his bullshit yet, despite the fact that his octogenarian ass got moved into the assisted living wing years ago after a scary fall getting off of an elevator.
Jesus Christ dude, this isn’t a good look.
“At first we thought maybe he had some kind of weird dementia that makes him think he’s eight years younger, but he clearly remembers enough recent events that this has to just be an unbearably cringey personal thing,” said Jim Frith, a 75-year-old resident who frequently has to endure Sterle’s bizarre posturing. “All the other 83-year-olds are totally fine hanging out together talking about classmates of theirs who got polio or their service in Korea, but Mike just has to feel like he’s one of the cool young 75-year-olds despite the fact that he was already old enough to vote for Eisenhower while we were still in grade school. People usually feel awkward enough to give him a little sympathy laugh when he calls someone ‘Daddy-O,’ and I think he somehow interprets that as the other 75-year-olds genuinely thinking he’s one of us instead of them having no idea how to deal with such a trainwreck of a guy.”
Man, some people just refuse to age with grace and dignity. Here’s hoping Sterle can stop clinging so pathetically to the past and accept that nobody stays 75 forever!
