I keep telling people: You’re not old until you reach 70 years.
And for any forum users at or above that age, you’re not even that old until you hit 100.
Frankly, every year that I still get to wake up is a victory. I’m approaching 30, but I’m excited to see if I make it to 60+, and what life will be like. Even if my eyes strain and my back aches more than it does now, and I get a whole lot of other problems, it’s still exciting.
There’s so much information I have yet to gather! My own pain is still interesting data, just like my victories and dreams!
I’m absolutely making use of my years before those problems kick in, of course, but I would never say that aging worries me!
To be fair, at least for me it’s less a fear of getting old and more getting slapped in the face by the awareness of time. Just like - oh god, that was that long ago? Ten years seems like nothing now? WEIRD! (Someone once told me at an internship that “[they] had socks older than [me]”, which I think about a lot.)
Also, for all of you young’uns - being 30 is awesome, idk why people worry about it so much. So far it’s way better than my 20s.
I had an amusing conversation with one of my cousin’s kids when she was about 11 trying to explain that phones before touch-tone had rotary manual dials and she did not believe me.
“So, did it take like a half an hour to dial 911?”
“We didn’t have 9-”
“Well, then how would you press one for English huh?”
I don’t think I have socks that old, as I don’t buy them often enough and tend to wear through them, but I certainly still have t-shirts and books I’ve purchased new as an adult that are older than some folks in attendance.
My son has a first 100 words book that uses a picture of a rotary phone to illustrate the word telephone, and I swear every time we get to that one he shoots me a look as if to say I’m only fifteen months old but I wasn’t born yesterday, exactly what are you trying to pull here daddy.
EDIT: and yeah, my 30s were way better than my 20s too! The pattern mostly holds true now that I’m in my 40s too, though I have to admit that there are some small bits of physical and mental decline that aren’t awesome - albeit much of that is probably just the toll of trying to keep up with said 15-month-old.
The 50s are an exciting age, because you get to have another adolescence, one no one prepared you for and that is every bit as hormonally and physically weird as the first one. Every day, you look at a part of your body and think, that can’t be mine. My hand/face/leg/stomach/knee doesn’t look like that.
I am frequently bringing up members at work who give their year of birth via email as 2002 and I can’t help reflexively thinking HOW ARE YOU ABLE TO TYPE FROM YOUR HIGH CHAIR?
