stop co-opting old people to fit your agenda

i think there's a rule that whenever someone eclipses the age of 100, some publication somewhere has to interview them and within that interview ask them the only question that seems to matter to anyone. what's your secret? that's all we wanna know. we're not here to mine your brain of all its beautiful memories. this is about us, much like everything else. we're looking for longevity and we know you're holding out on us.

i'd like to believe that behind the scenes, all the centenarians of the world are conspiring against us. they know that question's coming quicker than the time it takes to blow out the candles of their 101st birthday cake. why share their wisdom with us? no one helped them out on their way to the century mark. they had to do it the hard way, on their own. so why not agree to lie to us all? just make stuff up. for all we know, there is no grand secret at all. but they'll be more than happy to feed us nonsense anyways anytime we ask, "how'd you do it?"

soon enough the field is covered with what seems to be a countless amount of reasons why. some of them are even contradictory. some drink a lot of water. some have a glass of wine a day. some get trashed all the time. some abstain from drugs and alcohol altogether. some smoke pot. some still exercise. some sit on their ass and watch marathons of csi all day. some pray to god. some use an excessive amount of swear words and listen to heavy metal. 

whatever reason they give, there's always gonna be some ding dong (okay, usually several ding dongs) who're gonna take whatever it is they said and run with it. like the one who still smokes pot everyday. the pro-marijuana people see that and say, "see, i told you! pot's good for you!" but wait, what about this 108 year old dude over here who never smoked a puff of anything his entire life. suddenly the anti-drug / anti-smoking contingency is screaming, "SEE!!! we TOLD you all that shit is bad for you!!"

i think you see what i'm getting at here. i don't know what makes these old people tick. they themselves probably don't fully understand how they were able to live so long only to watch everyone they ever knew die around them. my guess is it's either a crap shoot or there is some grand secret and they're holding out on us. either way, stop manipulating whatever line they give you to fit into your soapbox diatribes. sooner or later, one of them's bound to mention something totally bat shit crazy like feasting on the blood of lambs and then what's gonna happen? all them lamb blood suckers are gonna come out and rub it in our faces. and we can't have that.... cuz if there's anything i hate, it's those no good, lamb blood sucking sonsofbitches.