Awesome.
I called my poor mother out when she described herself as middle-aged. “Are you planning to live to be 112?”
Do not go gently into that good night.
lisacurl writes:
> I called my poor mother out when she described herself as middle-aged. “Are
> you planning to live to be 112?”
And several other posters wrote similar things. Look, if this is meant to be just a funny offhand comment, that’s O.K., but if it’s a serious comment it’s way off base. “Middle-aged” has a standard definition. The standard definition is that a person is young until they reach the age of 40. From 40 to 64, they are middle-aged. From 65 on they are old. “Middle-aged” does not mean “approximately half of one’s expected lifespan.” It’s like the term “middle-class,” which used to be used only for people who were above average in income. Often it meant something like “anywhere from the 60th to the 95th percentile in income.” (The term has shifted in meaning in recent years and is now closer to actually meaning somewhere in the middle of income distribution.
“Middle-aged” meant “from 40 to 64 years old” a hundred and some years ago when the average lifespan was 47. If the average lifespan becomes 120, it will still mean that. If it changes in meaning, then that a matter of the definition of the word, not the average lifespan.