Youth

[livingdeb]

When I was a kid living in Chicago, we once went on vacation to Wisconsin Dells where I got to see a real (Native American) Indian, from whom I got a signed postcard. And I got a wooden pencil box. And I saw my aunt Grace. I thought she was so pretty that I asked her if she could give me a picture of her. She said she could send me one in the mail. I was surprised and happy that I would get a picture of her.

And she did send me a picture, but she sent me a photograph and I had been wanting a painting. Still, it was nice, and I kept it.

I thought of her then as being old, but more than thirty years later she's still around and she was at the reunion. She said she feels a lot older than at the last reunion.

That surprised me. I said, "But that was only two years ago."

She said, "There's a big difference between eighty and eighty-two."

I told her about Robin's grandpa who had that phrase I like, “When I was a young man of seventy ...” Aunt Grace said, “Yes, back when I was seventy I could still do everything, couldn't I?” And she looked around the room for help. But they were no help because they thought she could still do everything now.

Since I was ten, I've told myself that you're not old until you're eighty years old. So now I have some supporting evidence for this belief: two actual pieces of data from people who think that age 70 is still young.

So if you are thinking you're old, and you're not even seventy yet, you might want to re-think that.

Comments

[agirlnamedlucky.livejournal.com]

I think you're quite right there. I've commented to my parents recently (both in their early 50s) that people don't really start looking "old" to me until they hit around 70. People seem to retain or have the potential to retain most of their facial features and individual physical identity until much later in life than we tend to assume. And I can imagine that one would be far more physically active at 70 than at 82.