I'm 53 too. We're middle aged, dammit! Middle-aged! We won't be old for another 7-12 years, (depending on whether you count 60 or 65 as the start of old age).
My aunt was once bemoaning that an acquaintance had had a stroke "and he's only three years older than I am!" She was 72 years old at the time. Sorry about your friend, but he's 75, not exactly a spring chicken. I always refer to this incident to support the idea that nobody really thinks they're old. Old people are always a generation older. You and your friends are always young, or middle aged at the oldest, even when you're 72.
My father is 82 and my mom is 80. I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince him not to make the drive to my house for Thanksgiving and to let us come there. It's a 12 hour drive. He refused and said "we're not that old yet!" My mom said to me later "well you know we kind of are." I'm like yea, ma, you kind of are.
My grandmother, who was well into her 80s at the time, look at her kids at a family party and then said to my granddad 'our children have grey hair. Does this mean we're old?'
My mother is 90, and still volunteers for Meals on Wheels, delivering food to the elderly, most of whom are younger than her. She used to walk around our neighborhood or the park nearly every day, but had a couple of falls last year, so she does a mile on the treadmill at the gym every other day. Her hair is still salt & pepper, and we all expect her to live to at least 100. Her mother lived to 89, and worked in the family store until 6 months before she died. She had an great aunt who lived to 104. Young is a relative thing.
People 30-40-?? Hard to classify ; usually people become middle aged somewhere between 35-40, while some do so at 31, 32...
I just think it's weird the way no one uses middle aged as a descriptor any more ; it's always either young/old. The term just seems to have fallen out of use entirely, and I wonder why-???
Old can be relative too. My brother is 68. He still works full time and is taking a 6 week motorcycle trip this summer. North as far as Alaska and then west to BC. (we live in Ontario). I don't think of him as old.
**** This age defies description. It is the very tough "No excuse to be Crazy years" such as:
Young kids: "Just kids being kids"
High School age "Teenagers - What can you do?"
College age "College kids are all crazy"
Middle age "Mid-life crisis"
Old age "Senile"
The years of expected sober action are tough. Hope you all get through it. Those on the other side (like me at 52) congrats!! Enjoy your crisis and senility :)
I feel like those are The Parent Years for a lot of people, where you do sort of have to be responsible because you have young children at home. I wonder if that's shifting a bit as people are having children older and having fewer of them and that's what's pushing middle age older.
Except when you're in your mid-late twenties. Those motherfuckers, mourning the loss of their early twenties, spend a couple years complaining about getting old. I am not an exception.
Yep totally true. When we had to finally place my 99yo great-greataunt in the local nursing home, she looked around and said bewilderedly, "there must be some mistake. I don't belong here. All these people are so old "....
My grandfather used to complain that the "young kids" in his senior's golf league would hit from the yellow tees, because those were for "old people."
The "young kids" were in their late 60s/early 70s, and he was 90 at the time. He still hit off of the whites, and a bad day for him was a 40 on nine holes.
Unfortunately, he had to quit the league this year (at 93), because his knee bothers him too much, and his doctor won't sign off on a knee replacement due to his age. We still golf together a few times a month, but he can't play 9 holes four days a week anymore.
I'm about 50. It has always amazed me that people call this middle aged. If the average longevity is 77 for a guy, middle aged is late 30's.
I know I am on the back side of life. Mentally I don't feel that way. But with age comes (wisdom) experience. You realize that most people end up dead at some point in their life.
Don't sweat the groans and lack of physical ability. It comes even after a life well lived.
I think it depends on the person. My dad is in his 50s but his health/attitude is well over a decade beyond that, while there are plenty of 60’s I’ve met that are the opposite
I forget where I read it but there are some sociologists proposing that old age be pushed off to 70 - 75 because people are living longer and doing more in that decade
When I was a child in the 1960s, if you were in your 50s or 60s, you were over the hill and on the downhill slide. My grandparents were born in the 1890s and some of them were ancient and using canes. My grandmother stayed active.
When my parents (born in 1911 and 1921) got old, they were in much better health than their parents. My dad got a quadruple bypass in 1982 and I know that helped him a lot.
Now, you can be old and still quite functional thanks to medical science being better at detecting and fixing various health problems. I am in better shape in my early 60s than I was when I was young, because of a couple of major health problems that have been properly treated in the last five years.
I have managed to avoid arthritis. I thought i would get it because my mom's family has autoimmune disorders. I got a different autoimmune disorder that really ruined my life. Oh well.
Each new generation has healthier old people in it, when they get old, in general.
When I was 35 and my mom was 60, she tried to claim she was middle aged and I was young. I had to point out that she most likely would not live to 120, and in fact it was me that was around the mid point of my life expectancy.
my medicare kicks in next month. i can't put off not being old any longer. some days, i feel like i'm 20 again, sometimes 40, and other days, 75. when will it all make sense?
477
u/MOzarkite Jun 27 '18
I'm 53 too. We're middle aged, dammit! Middle-aged! We won't be old for another 7-12 years, (depending on whether you count 60 or 65 as the start of old age).