http://couponsinthenews.com/2017/04/28/kroger-does-away-with-another-senior-discount/

With great horror I read in this morning's paper that Kroger will be ending its Tuesday Senior Discount Program at the end of May. I instantly wanted to shout, "I didn't do it!" like I did when I was little and the shit hit the fan over something having been broken. Momma would call out, "WHO did this?" and I would call back, "I didn't do it." Whether or not I had was irrelevant because that is just the answer you give when you are the youngest and there are two other bodies in the house who were equally likely to have committed the crime. Reading about Kroger ending the Senior Citizen Discount Program caused me to have that knee-jerk reaction of guilt that is more related to the there-and-then than the here-and-now. For lack of a better term, I will call it retro guilt and define it as, “a sorrowful feeling one has as a result of a present transgression that is disproportionately greater than the magnitude of the present transgression but is, rather, appropriately proportionate to a transgression committed at an earlier time.” Because, you see, I might have abused the Senior Citizen Discount a few months ago and, if abuse of the system contributed to Kroger's decision to end the program, I was feeling pretty guilty because I’m sure there are lot of people a lot older than I who rely on that discount and intentionally shop only on Tuesdays to be able to get it.

A few months ago I went to Kroger on a Tuesday. When I was completing my transaction at a self checkout station, I received a screen prompt asking if I am a senior citizen. I thought, "Well, it's about time I was here on a Tuesday and got to try this." But at precisely the same moment as I tapped the "Yes" button, I had a queasy feeling that I might not actually qualify as a senior citizen. How old do you have to be to be considered a senior citizen anyway? I had been thinking it was 55, but I suddenly had a thought that it might be much older, like 60 or 65. I am only 58, so it was quite possible I had just broken a law and, as I explained in my treatise on the rules of food presentation, I am a rule-follower. It was what happened next that struck me with a wave of retro guilt the likes of which I haven't felt in many years. A screen popped up that said, "Please show ID to attendant." Holy shit, I thought. I'm getting carded. Everything went into slow motion and the room started to spin as I suddenly envisioned myself in knee socks and a short jean skirt trying to buy beer at the age of 17 in the 7-Eleven across the street from my high school. The response to a request for ID back then was an easy, "I don't have it with me." It was bullshit, but it allowed me to leave the beer on the counter and walk away without any escalation of the situation. But I couldn't pull that here. I mean, the attendant had probably seen me scan my Kroger Plus card that was hanging on my car keys and knew I had driven there. So saying I didn't have any ID on me could actually get me into a lot of trouble because what if he then called the police to say a lady just left and got in her car and drove away and she didn't have a driver's license? I could fess up and say, "I'm so sorry. I thought the Senior Citizen age was 55," which was, after all, the truth. My heart was pounding as I turned to face the kiosk where the attendant stood. I still hadn't decided what my plan of action would be when he glanced at me and then looked down at his touch pad and typed in something. The screen advanced to the last stage of the checkout, where 5%, or $4.45, had been subtracted from my $89.00 grocery bill. That little millennial piece of shit took one look at me and decided I was at least whatever the senior citizen age is. He then typed in some arbitrary birthdate like 1930 to unlock my station. Simultaneous conflicting waves of relief and fury washed over me. How dare he stereotype me as a senior based only on the facts that I have gray hair and had to get my glasses out to enter the code number for an avocado. Isn’t that ageism?

Kroger, if the reason you are ending the senior citizen discount program is because of abuse of the system and if, in fact, I did trick the system out of $4.45, thereby contributing to said abuse, I’m sorry. You should have made it clear what the minimum age is (in very large print) on the checkout screen, and you should have told those little self-involved millennial nose-pickers who run the Self Checkout Police Station to card anyone who looks under 100. I still don’t know at what age one legally becomes a senior citizen but, given that the first thing I did when I got out of bed this morning was sit in a hot tub to soothe my aching muscles, I think eligibility should be self-assigned.

An example of self-assigned senior citizen eligibility.