Think On It

What’s Wrong with Getting Old?

December 26th, 2006

When I talked to my daughter the day before Christmas, she said, “I am having second thoughts about what I bought for you. You said you wanted it, but just because you say you want it, it doesn’t mean I should get it for you. I think I may have made a mistake.”

So yesterday I opened the gifts and although I could barely remember having said I wanted it, I did want it. I couldn’t figure out why she thought it could be a mistake. I was excited about it.

It is a Nintendo ds, which is the version that can be used anywhere in the world, and “Brain Age” which is based on research by a Japanese scientist and consists of exercises that help reduce the age of your brain. If I had asked for a breast lift and left the rest of me alone, then I think that would be silly and she could have her doubts about the gift and about me. But who doesn’t want a lively brain that can get to all the things stored away, and not forget what that is called in English?

It has to be that her misgivings are about giving me something that says maybe I am getting old. I am getting old. It’s pretty much age or die, isn’t it? I have innumerable friends who have had plastic surgery to varying degrees of success, but they are still getting old.

I don’t feel like I am getting fuddy duddy kind of old, although my aversion to the over-liberal use of the F word gets my leg pulled now and again. Search for a video called “Pulp Fiction the F***ing Short Version”  (do not open this at work unless you have headphones!) and it illustrates my point. I wish someone would hire me to edit these scripts and insert really dangerous language in the place of 95% of the F words. Imagine Clark Gable leaving Vivian Leigh at the door of Tara and saying, “Frankly, my dear. I don’t give a f***.”

I will admit to having some well-honed attitudes about politeness – importance thereof, judgment, kindness, honesty and art. Would you expect me to reach sixty without having a single clue? Would you expect if you met me to find Paris Hilton?

Ok, so now my friends will come out and say that I am not really old, that it is a state of mind, that I am remarkably modern still. Huh? Come on, folks. I live in this world. I am a modern woman. Lots of women my age or older are doing breakthrough scientific research, writing important novels (Annie Proulx: The Shipping News), serving in Parliaments and Senates around the world. As far as I know there has never been a thirty-year-old President or Prime Minister of any country. Correct me if I am wrong—I haven’t actually researched that. I consider women serving in the arts, science and government to be THE modern woman. Why would I settle for being less in my small way?

So, what’s wrong with getting old? The only thing I see wrong with it is the tendency for society not to respect age. I turned on the radio the other day and all the female singers sounded like children. Why? If someone grownup writes a grownup love song, they don’t sound believable singing it. The result is a bunch of immature songs about boringly puerile sex. It appears that all the big movie stars are not only young, but also skinny to the point of seeming undeveloped. So who will play important female parts, like Queen Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great or Marie Curie? The answer is, of course, we don’t get many movies like that anymore.

Christmas Eve I watched “Love, Actually” mostly to get scenes from “24” out of my head so I could sleep in peace. Who do I remember from that movie? Emma Thompson. When she is on scene, no one else exists. She is not young. If you watch “Sense and Sensibility” which Thompson also wrote, you will remember the scene in which she finds out her lover loves her and not the other girl everyone said he would marry. I really don’t see Keira Knightley convincingly carrying off the near disintegration into snuffly, ugly tears as she struggles to mend the hole in her heart. Knightley had her chance in “Pride and Prejudice” and came off smug instead.

When I hear people asking what kinds of aids they need and plans they should make in order to travel to Italy with their sixty-year-old parents, I just want to smack them. Old isn’t crippled. Crippled is crippled. If their parents are handicapped, then arrange for a trip for handicapped people. I will do anything to help them figure that out because I want everybody to enjoy Italy. For crying out loud, get out of your self-imposed ignorant mindset that people of sixty or seventy are frail. The weakness that I see here is in the mind that thinks that.

Another peeve for me is the allowance that there are some handsome old people, like Sofia Loren. Which of you looks like Sofia Loren at any of her ages? And isn’t it time she stopped insisting she has never had plastic surgery? Or else the referral to some few exercised to a standard reached by Olympians. If an aging person feels strongly about staying super-fit and toned, great. But please let’s don’t set that bar so high for the rest of us! Would you rather have had Albert Einstein buff or brilliant? Would Pavarotti still have his old voice if he had liposuction? Do you want to spend six hours a day in the gym when you are 60?

I like some old people and I don’t like others. I like some young people and I don’t like others. At least I make it my business to know both. Old people shouldn’t try to stay young, in my opinion, any more than young people should try to be old. Old people should strive, I think, to stay relevant. Maybe “Brain Age” will help.

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized, Waste, Italy, Preserving, Fashion