After I passed 45 I started to feel my age. I am not looking forward to reaching 50 in about 18 months. I hope my life sucks less, that will make a difference, but most likely it will be the same or worse, so…
Just before puberty is when I had the most fun with the fewest anxieties. I have done many many things, but in my late fifties started returning to the joys I had at that time. Riding horses, making art, practicing my own personal weird invented mysticism, and not worrying any more about what my life was supposed to become. I gave up my lifelong effort to be someone recognizable to others as a category, which was so very draining. I tried being an adult but it just didn’t come together for me. Oh well.
There are times, both in my work life and personal life, where I find myself thinking “Wow, I handled that pretty well. Wonder how I knew to handle it that way?”. Then I remember that I have 54 years worth of experiences to draw on.
But would someone please explain to me how I can have a 27 year old son when in my mind I’m barely older than that myself?
I’m 59, fixing to be 60 next month. I’ll tell you guys, what I tell others in real life. I look like shit, but I feel like a million bucks. Now when I do die, when people ask me what was my last words, I hope this wasn’t it before instantly falling over with a major coronary. 
Seriously, my health has never been better, everything works just great, no medicines of any kind, just good food and drink. Nothing is foolproof, but I do believe there are things you can do with your life that puts the odds in your favor of maintaining good health.
I’ll turn 57 next week and do feel young. 3 kids, all growed up and in their 30s (the youngest, my baby girl, she turns 30 soon). Married with a wife who’s my best friend and we get along great — yes she’s a forgiving saint.
I’m planning for retirement and figuring out what I’ll be doing then. I hope it’s lots of traveling. Things to do, places to go, people to see.
Almost 66, but I don’t feel like a grown-up yet. I tend to think I’m still youngish – I’m healthy, fit, mostly unwrinkled – until I’m around genuinely young people, and then I am grateful that I’m not actually that young anymore, and a most of the angst is behind me. In some ways, I’m more playful now than I was when I was a kid, and I definitely still have areas of life where I’m still clueless.
I really think this is the case; I think that since I got into my mid-late 20s and the teenage/early 20s testosterone stupidity had boiled off, I haven’t really changed the way I think (I’m 45 now).
What is different is that I have a lot more experience to draw on, so where things that might have seemed reasonable at 26 don’t seem so great at 45 because I have suffered the consequences of poor choices, and/or seen others suffer those consequences. So the idea pops into my head that I can do something, and the experience pops in and says “Bad idea.” At 26, that experience never popped in, or in a much weaker voice.
But I still like fart jokes, and laugh at all the same juvenile crap that I have all along, and like to play video games, although with a full time job and two young sons, my time to do that is seriously curtailed versus being married with a full time job, much less being in college/graduate school.
88 last birthday, and feel generally about 30. Until I start walking and my legs remind me that I ain’t 30 any more. I tell my friends that above the waist I’m 30 YO, and below the waist I’m at least 115 YO.
Actually, when you get this old, one of the perks is you get to meet a whole lot of new people. Unfortunately, they’re all in the medical profession.
Um - happy birthday then!
Recently turned 43. I wouldn’t say that I feel like a young’un, but I am frequently immature. Hmm…
That’s pretty bitchin’ there, Bob! Happy (belated) Birthday!
Just trenched out an 80 foot French drain and covered the pipe with about 1200 pounds of pea gravel. Can I change my previous answer? Cuz I feel every year of 46 right now. And I’m only 43.
This morning I would have said that I feel 15 years younger than I am (which would make me 38). Unfortunately, I carried several boxes of books from the school office tongue library. I was fine on my run this afternoon, but if I move my back just so I feel decrepit.
I got carded when buying a bottle of wine at the supermarket last night.
Made me feel just like one of them there young’uns!
I have the opposite problem. Just recently, cashier gave me what I thought was too much change back, and I point it out to him. He said, “Sir, that is correct change, you qualify for the senior discount.” He never even bothered to ask me my age.
I’m 60 and it’s just in the last year that I’ve started to feel old. I hurt my back pretty bad last December and even though it is getting better it has really made me feel my age. Today I needed to get down on the ground to work on something and it was eye opening what an ordeal it turned into. Really more my knee than back but it’s all part of the same sciatic injury. I had to climb up on the roof a couple days ago and that was something that I would have done without a second thought a couple years ago and now it’s an anxiety producing experience.
Enjoy your youth my junior Dopers!
I’m 64 (“will you still need me, will you still feed me” ;)), but I feel anywhere from a couple decades younger to feeling like a big kid.
People near my age say things like “getting old is a bitch,” and my response is always, “that’s why I refuse to have anything to do with it.” And I’m doing a pretty good job of making that stick.
Yesterday, we had a community picnic, and they had something I’d never seen before - an obstacle course bounce house. Kinda like a big long tube on the outside, and inside there was all sorts of stuff you had to clamber through or over to get to the other end. And it wasn’t easy, either: one of the twentysomethings in charge of the bounce house, with a very athletic build, gave up halfway through.
I did the course five times.
(The Firebug went through it dozens of times, but he’s just turning 11. He can do that shit. I’m a young 64, but I’m not that young a 64. :))
I’m 41 and engaged, no kids, but going on 26. Already retired (once), but have a dream job where everyone thinks I’m in my mid-thirties because I’m A) thrilled to be there, B) enjoy the work, and C) act eager to jump on anything I can help with. I still go to the gym three times a week, and while the joints do get sore on my off days, I am still happy to say I walk into the place, knock out 10 strict pull ups, and then get right to work.
Mentally, I have the experience of my age, but the happiness and agility of my younger years. While I’m a little more conservative with risk now, I am still: “Old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway.” The altitude here helps me look superhuman when I visit other towns.
Tripler
Rule #1 about CrossFit: “You don’t shut the f*ck up about CrossFit.”