Study Reveals New Stage of Development in Elderly.....

Cambridge, MA- A new trend is emerging, and for once it doesn't involve millennial date-sharing apps or the Kardashian's new line of cosmetic cervical caps. A recent study from AARP, Inc. has revealed that an increasing number of older Americans are taking part in a previously unheard of stage of development that experts are calling Elderly-onset transchronia (EOT). Social media, as is often the case, has boiled this complex concept down into its more meme friendly essence: "infanting".

A 72-year-old retired accountant demonstrating Stage 3 adult-onset transchronia

"This is a previously unheard of stage of development," developmental geriatrician Mort Fishman, MD explained. "For every adulting 22-year-old graduate student learning to do laundry for the first time or how to get a passport, I'm seeing a retired neurosurgeon sucking their thumb and putting on their first diaper in decades."

Elderly-onset transchronia, like the midlife crisis in younger adults, involves a transition of identity, likely in response to stressful life events or perhaps a growing awareness of their own mortality. The midlife crisis often presents as depression, anxiety, or an intense desire to make lifestyle changes in an attempt to recapture lost youth, but it can be benign and it tends to resolve. EOT, however, results in an increasingly focused obsession with living life as an infant that persists until death.

Transchronia in the elderly appears to go through several stages of increasingly infantile behavior. According to Fishman, the first stage is often very subtle, with the development of stranger anxiety or an infatuation with a set of jingling house keys. "By stage 3, bowel and bladder control has been lost and a diaper is required. At stage 7, object permanence is lost. At stage 9, driving may no longer be safe."

Area Middle School Student Council President Signs Executive Order to Investigate Cootie Shot Safety.....

Spearfish, SD- Spearfish Middle School student council president Chance Tater, keeping a promise made during a contentious campaign last Fall, has signed an executive order establishing a Cootie Shot Safety Commission.

President Tater, shown here wearing a dress shirt, tie, khaki cargo shorts and sandals with socks to prom.

"I have had concerns regarding the safety of the cootie shot for years," Tater, an 8th grade student who loves playing basketball and hopes to see a girls boob at camp over the Summer, explained during 3rd period Social Studies. "I had two friends who totally changed after getting a booster at recess during 6th grade orientation. I couldn't hang out with them anymore. And one of them had a pool at their house!"

Tater further announced during an emergency recess press conference held in the cafeteria today that he would be putting school food service assistant Carl, a 62-year-old lifelong Spearfish resident and three-time alien abductee, in charge of the commission. Carl, who has questioned the need for a cootie shot in past, offered an award to any student who could prove beyond even the slightest doubt that the cootie shot is completely safe. "If they can do it, I'll let them into the cafeteria storage room for fifteen minutes, alone, and no questions asked."

Not everyone at Spearfish Middle is pleased with the president's agenda. Principle Don Lyon, a firm believer in the safety, efficacy, and need for the cootie shot, remembers a time when cooties was rampant among the student population. "I normally wouldn't interfere with student politics. They need to learn. But this is the same guy who accused the guidance counselor of leaking his transcript to the Spearfish Student Gazette. Let's just say that President Tater should get used to being in the 8th grade."