Reports filtering in from the furthest heartlands speak of a terrible new plague. The first victims have barely three years left to enjoy the premium views from their condo windows and can do nothing but bitch and moan as construction sites erupt like buboes around them, as mature trees are felled to make space for…whisper it…mature people. Rumors are spreading of marauding hordes of the elderly descending on remote hawker centers and sitting there for upwards of an hour, just talking. The horror of it all!How long it will be before the sickness spreads we can only guess. Six months? A year? What we do know is that some of these new-builds are being offered with 30 year leases, so the future looks bleak. All we can do is be prepared. Here’s your four-point plan.• If you see an elderly person, do not approach them. They may look human, may even share some of your DNA, but this is merely a cunning disguise. They will stop at nothing to just get on with their lives and be treated like normal people. They will, however, only attack when threatened. Do not attempt to chope their table, do not suggest you know better, that things are tougher for you than they were for them, or that you want to follow a career for satisfaction not salary.• Stock up on tinned food. This will be hard, since it may mean coming into contact with someone with grey hair. Old folks love their tinned food! When the world ends, it’ll just be them and the cockroaches left behind, smugly eating tinned beans. Know your enemy and learn from them.• Raise the alarm. If you are captured by an elderly person—maybe they were kind enough to cook you dinner or babysit your kids—take stock of your surroundings. You can use their weaknesses against them; chances are there’s an emergency pull cord somewhere in their apartment.• Do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to age. Those that do will find they quickly suffer the painful effects of extreme hypocrisy; a process only alleviated with high-frequency doses of compassion and intravenous injections of sensitivity.
