How our readers know they’re old

Apparently last week’s submission by your humble scribe hit a nerve, or maybe an arthritic joint, with the silver-haired set, of which I am a proud member. In an attempt to define, once and for all, at what point someone should be considered “old” I put forth a list of ten indicators. I also asked readers to send in their own indications that they are perhaps past their best before date. The response was immediate and varied.

For those few of you who don’t follow this column with slavish devotion perhaps I should offer an explanatory note. This all started some time back when my bride described herself as “middle aged,” a claim that could be considered valid only if she intends on living to be 136. From there I decided to look at the various signs of “oldness.”

Now admittedly, the age at which one can be considered truly old is a relative thing, as was pointed out to me by several readers. A citizen of ancient Greece or Rome, for example, could look forward to somewhere between 20 and 35 years of fun and frolic before the latest invader sent them to the sweet hereafter. Thus, by the time you hit 30 you were likely considered a senior citizen. Likewise for those born between the 1500s and 1800s when life spans generally hovered between 30 and 40 years of age. If you lived to be 50 then, you were definitely old. It was also pointed out that in this day and age there are more and more centenarians so 70 can truly be seen as the new 50. Hog wash. It merely means there are more and more people who can be classified as “really old.”

But back to the point. Here are some of the many suggestions, in no specific order and with no names, sent in by readers on how you can tell if you are truly old.

1. You are old if you subscribe to The Record just so you can read what day of the week it is.

2. You are old when the children you taught are now grandparents.

3. You are old when you can’t keep up with the self-propelled lawn mower that you bought to make mowing easier.

4. You are old when you offer a friend a ride home from the grocery store and then spend the next ten minutes searching the parking lot until you suddenly realize that you also walked down the hill.

5. You are old when every morning upon waking up you have to shake your hands for two or three minutes before you regain any feeling in them.

6. You are old when you rely on the menu at the seniors’ residence to remind you what day it is, as in, “Oh, bacon and eggs for breakfast. That means its Thursday.”

7. You are old when every time you drive down College St. you’re surprised that the bridge to Bishop’s is closed.

8. You are old when your first child turns fifty.

9. You are old when you try the doors on three different grey-beige cars in the parking lot before you find your own.

10. You are old when it takes three phone calls, two technicians and the twelve-year-old neighbour kid to hook up your new television set.

Lets face it, after a certain age there are numerous daily experiences that emphasize with a certain clarity that we are no longer quite what or who we were. The choice is simple. You can, as they said in the sixties, go with the flow, or you can do a Dylan Thomas and “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

The American writer, Robert Benchley, summed up the ignore-it-and-it-willgo-away argument beautifully when he wrote, “Except for the occasional heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did.” The famed exotic dancer, Gypsy Rose Lee, also had a pretty good handle on aging when she quipped, “I have everything I had twenty years ago only its all a little bit lower.”

As for me, I tend to go with the writer and bon vivant, Oscar Wilde. “To get back to my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early or be respectable.”