When Do We Start Being Old?

Photo by Nam Hoang on Unsplash

Several friends contacted me after my last post, in which I perfunctorily said that at nearly 81, I was old. I didn’t mean it; who does? It was just one of those ballsy, “See, I’m realistic!” exercises meant to demonstrate a courageous grasp on Truth while being an absolute lie. For various reasons, my friends took exception to my saying it. My favorite remark was, “Abbie, you’re not old! How can you say that? I’m two years older than you!” Subtext – “And I’m not old!”

Prone to hours of introspection as a method for avoiding laundry, emails I should have answered weeks ago and anything involving numbers, the question intrigued me.

 In my childhood home we had a giant, one-volume Columbia Encyclopedia that weighed as much as a window air-conditioner. It was kept on a huge doily atop the buffet in the dining room, and since I couldn’t lift it I was told to climb on a chair and look up whatever I was asking about. Like, “Is Trigger married?” or “Do department store dummies have names?” As far as I can remember, the encyclopedia never provided the answers I sought, but the research habit is permanent. So I researched “old,” subliminally aware that, as ever, in the end I would have to create the answer myself.

The United Nations and the World Health Organization set “old” at 60, while here at home the Social Security Administration says 65. Businesses often set senior rates and perks at 55, and 40 seems to be the breaking point for a multi-billion dollar anti-aging industry.that includes cosmetics, vitamins, exercise programs, fashion and foundation garments, sex toys, diets, books, courses and cosmetic surgeries. So, 40-65, depending on your reason for thinking about it. Either you’re a government agency, a business with something to sell, or a person wanting to look young.

There are over a thousand online magazines and blogs meant for “seniors,” including, of course, one published by AARP. It’s typically corporate, as are those devoted to travel, and almost all consent to some focus on medical issues. But none addresses the issue of exactly when “old” starts.

Except one, my favorite, Oldster.

I have no idea who its author, Sari Botton, is, and have no stake in promoting her newsletter, but a cursory Google search revealed Sari to be the editor of this anthology - https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-One-Writers-Respond-Americas-Reproductive/dp/1936511096 - so she’s clearly fierce and brilliant. I mean, Get Out of My Crotch? Best title ever! Oldster stays in Botton’s character with a ton of essays by good writers on getting old, and several of those writers identify precisely the truth I already knew but thought it was just me, so I had to look it up.

That is, WE DON’T! There is no point at which we start being old, ever.

Because “we” are the secret selves inside our minds and nothing else. Those selves are unaffected by time, although some of Botton’s essayists select an age with which they permanently identify, like 30 or 42. For me it’s probably about 20. The real “we” are not the bum knees, the sagging breasts, expanding waists, wiry, pale hair, spotted skin and hearing aids, not the spiking bp, heart irregularities, gloomy diagnoses, or even death. We’ve been around long enough to have learned every nuance of the “old” role, can play it at academy award-winning levels and do. But it’s all an act, totally bogus, a concession to the expectations of those who haven’t thought about this yet. The lives we’re really living inside would shock them!

I still have a gorgeous cardigan I bought when I turned fifty, my Old Lady Sweater. I thought fifty was time to become an old lady, so I chose the symbol. The sweater is black with thick, elaborately embroidered leaves in fall colors spilling down the front, shiny, faceted black buttons and delicate little shoulder pads. I love it and it looks good on me, but in the thirty-one years since then I have yet to wear it.

In a few days I’ll be eighty-one, taken to lunch by friends, and I still won’t wear it. It’s not time yet. It will probably never be time. The secret twenty-year-old in my mind wouldn’t be caught dead in it, and when I actually am dead, a staffer at a Good Will somewhere will say, “Look at this!  It’s a gorgeous Anne Taylor that’s never been worn!”

I think that’s the answer to my question.