I was born while Truman was in the White House as well. **Kunilou **is preachin’ it.
You know how to tell when you’re getting older? Almost everything hurts and what doesn’t hurt, doesn’t work right. 
bump, one of my great-grandmothers didn’t want to use a cane at the age of 95 because it’d make her look old. Somewhere around the same time she also told my mom she needed to take good care of her skin so that Mom didn’t get all wrinkly like she was.
Her daughter-in-law is turning 91 in a few days, as we’re doing the my-grandma’s-older-than-your-grandma thing in this thread apparently – I think I win! Healthwise, she has a few things going on but all is currently under control.
When you stop pulling out grey pubic hairs.
I don’t think about my death more often, but right now my father-in-law is 87 and he’s in that long downhill slide from complete self-sufficience. I worry about how my wife will react when he dies.
I’m semi-retired, meaning I pretty much only work when someone calls and asks me. Free time is actually only a good thing when you want it.
Financial insecurity. My wife has a fixed pension, so we’ll always have that and Social Security, but our retirement investments have been clobbered over the past few years, and it looks like I’ll be 88 years old before I can pay off my house.
No, I really don’t think of myself as “old.” It’s more like “I can’t do that anymore.” In my mind I’m still young and active, but in the mirror I’m gray-haired, balding and wrinkled.
Let’s put it this way, I appreciate Lady Gaga’s talent, but her act is Madonna in the 1980’s, Elton John in the 1970’s, Little Richard in the 1950’s… and Busby Berkely in the 1930’s. I saw Lady Antebellum on Saturday Night Live, mixing country-style harmony with a rock beat. I liked it, but for the last 10 or 15 years I’ve been listening to the founders – Hank Williams, the Carter Family, Chuck Berry and others who pioneered the sounds.
Now, here’s the real secret about old people and that damn music. We all have high frequency hearing loss – in my case, there’s a substantial drop above 11khz. That means the bass lines start overpowering everything else, including horns, strings, cymbals and vocals. Eventually, all we can hear are bass and drums and it all starts to sound the same.
See my OP
My grandfather died when he was 102. My oldest aunt is 98 and every bit as temperamental as she was when she was 60. I’m here to teach and explain.
Heh - my grandmother spent the last 9 years of her life in a semi-autonomous residential home; she had her little one-bedroom apartment, but there was nursing staff to help with bathing and making sure she took her medicine, and there was an optional dining room and activities. She never joined the other residents for anything because she’d say “c’est des p’tit vieux” (it’s all old people). She didn’t see herself as being all that old, though she died at 86.
Do you have to decide between meds, not due to money, but more like, “If I take my ibuprofen, it’ll upset my stomach, but my knee really, really hurts. What’s worse?”
Not between meds, but I had to choose between meds and alcohol. I haven’t had a drink in nine years.
Sounds about right. The part I forgot to mention is that the “old ladies” that she complains about are usually 10 years younger than she is. That’s the part that cracks me up.
So, kunilou do you consider yourself older and wiser now that you’re older? The reason I ask is that I can definitely identify a gradual change in thinking from about age 30 to now (39) that I’d describe as a maturing process. I think ahead more, I’m not so reckless as I used to be, and I’m more deliberate in what I do actually set out to do.
I just wonder if this will continue, or if it’ll stagnate for a while, then pick back up when I’m in my 50s and 60s.
May I chime in here? I’m gonna anyway. I was born during Calvin Coolidge’s administration. Yes, I am 85. 
My DH is 92, and we have been married for 64 years. It’ll be 65 years next January. Moreover my DH is a veteran of WWII, and proud of that.
I personally drive a 2002 Subaru Legacy, bright red in color just because I like red. My DH drives a 2010 Honda. I no longer feel safe driving on the Interstate Highways, so I doubt if I am slowing anyone down at all. I no longer drive at night, but my DH still does.
I do not have a cell phone, but my DH has one. We still have a landline.
Yes, we both use the computer!! How else could I be writing this?
Yes, I think of death quite often, especially since many of our friends are dying these days. We are Christian, and attend church regularly. Our faith is strong, so we are not in any way afraid to die. There is absolutely no way to avoid death, you know that, and I know that. I do fear the possible loss of independence, but so far - so good.
We have no intention of moving to Arizona, mostly because we are happy in Wyoming.
Yes, the physical frailities of aging are creeping up on us. Mentally we are still very much OK.
Many of the changes in the culture do appall us, but we tend to just ignore those changes. We are enjoying life, and we just go ahead and mind our own business.
Aging is mandatory, let’s do it as gracefully as possible.
Ah, a proper oldster, and using emoticons too.
Sure, some are appalling, but you must also be pretty impressed by other aspects of the modern world. The fact that you can sit at home in Wyoming and have your words instantly transmitted to a community of people slacking off work all around the globe (and a get a response from me in England, six minutes later), for one?
Actually it is far from mandatory. Many people don’t get the opportunity. You’re one of the lucky ones!
Lemme jump in here and ask you this: When was the last time you spent more than 2 minutes discussing something with your wife like the purchase of a lamp or what color the walls of the baby’s room should be? Would you not consider that to be a mundane, boring grown-up thing?
I started feeling like an adult when I realized I was getting excited about things like a buying a new area rug or replacing my dishwasher. When that kind of shit jacks you up more than the thought of going to the bar and getting hammered with your friends… you’re well in sight of the crest of the hill.
I started feeling old when I realized my BFF and I had spent 30 minutes discussing our various ailments and doctor’s appointments. When you find yourself doing that, you’ve done coasted right over the crest and are headed down the proverbial hill.
I take your point. I just had this strange idea, when I was younger, that I would feel like a totally different person when I was “grown up”, and I don’t.
Dave Barry once wrote a column on aging. He said something like “You know you’re an adult when you realize you’d rather be in the living room with other adults, talking about prostate cancer, than in the garage lighting plastic milk jugs on fire just to see what happens.”
So true. So true.
Me too. I remember saying, very drunkenly, in college, that I thought I had to hurry and get all my partying in up front because my life would be over by the time I turned 30. I have no idea what in the hell I thought would happen, but I had to laugh at myself when I hit 30. I was still partying! Not quite as much as I did back in the day, but still, I’m having plenty of fun.
I think I thought I’d get married and have kids, even though I didn’t really want to, but I would because that’s what you do. And that seemed like a prison sentence to me, or maybe indentured servitude (apartheid, maybe?), so had I gone the wife and mommy route, I might feel differently.
My point being, you still have all kinds of awesome fun; it’s not all boring, mundane crap. But sometimes the boring and mundane is actually more fun to you. Your definition of fun changes, but you don’t stop being awesome. Until your children hit puberty and then, apparently, you’re an embarrassment until they need money for college. Or so I’m told.
Not wiser, but definitely more experienced in thinking things through. It’s like my decision-making process has gone from a simple “I want X, so I’ll do Y,” into a whole tree of if>then statements. Granted, 99% of those outcomes won’t happen, but I see them.
Now if I could just figure out a way to handle that one percent that happens, but I didn’t see, I’d be set.
I like emoticons. And I am very impressed with the speed of Internet communications. I am also curious about future advances in technology. We do live in wonderful times.
As for many people not having the opportunity to age, do you mean because they die young? Actually those who die young escape many of the problems of growing older. However they have aged from the moment they were born until the moment they die. We can’t avoid the aging process.
Excellent. I was born during the Truman administration also, but I’d much rather be lighting things on fire than talking to adults. I also have all my hair, a smartphone, not just a cellphone, and parts that more or less still work.
My father-in-law was born during the Wilson administration. He not only uses a computer, but Skypes with my daughter in Germany, has a cell phone, composed music until very recently, and still plays the market competently. I taught him how to program when he was 65. He also has a girlfriend a year older than him. I want to be like him when I grow up.
That’s old? Bah. I met a woman this summer who was born when Roosevelt was President.
Theodore Roosevelt.
(True story. She’s 103.)
Now, back to your thread…
JoThrive, would you please come visit my family and 'splain that new-fangled internet thingy to them? I never talk to them but if they were online at least I could pop them a quick email every now and then.
By this definition I have been ‘old’ since I was about 10 years old.