I’m 45. I’m not old!
In my 20s I might have thought 45 was old, definitely 50s. Now, 50s are not old. I have friends and family in their 50s. 60s? Nah. Can’t really consider that to be old. I think 70s is getting old, and shit 80s is definitely old!
I am 35 and I always considered the 30’s and up to be old. As I have gotten older, I still see 30 as the age that one might start becoming old, though I have learned that age is relative. I mean, I have a friend who is 2 years older than I am – hiw wife is 2 years older than he is (so, around 38/39) but she always seems “old” to me. I feel like a little kid around her.
On a related note – I work with a lady who is of retirement age. She just turned 65, but I can hang with her and don’t consider her “old” at all. Meh.
FWIW, I don’t feel old.
I’m 34 and consider 70 to be old.
I’m 34, and for as long as I’ve lived, “old” has always been “5-6 years older than me.” I’m serious.
I just turned 28, so the thoughts I had in high school that 30 was old are all gone now.
Now I think 45 is old. No offense.
I think old will always be about 15- 20 years ahead of where I’m at.
I am 26.
Currently I feel 50 is past the ‘old’ line.
I’m 52; “old” is 72.
I’m 21. The ages between 30-35 are a sort of gray ‘maybe getting there’ area. Once you’re old enough to run for president, though, that’s definitely ‘old’ territory.
No offense intended to anyone, and I’m sure that within ten years my definitions may have changed.
I’m 36. I know people in their sixties who can party and people in their 20s who are considered a drag by nuns. I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is just a number, and that individual people are or are not “old”.
Depends what you define as “old”. Do you mean “old” as in “lived a long time”? In that case, 70+ would be old.
Do you mean “old” as in “not a young kid anymore”, I would say 30-35, depending on the individual.
Do you mean “old” as in “physically deteriorating” or “old person’s attitude”, depends. I know guys in their late 20s who basically let themselves go, look like shit, and have what I consider an “old person’s attitude” where they just can’t be bothered to give a shit about their physical fitness or appearance. I know guys who are in their 50s who are in great shape and have a very youthfull attitude.
“old” is always going to change because you are going to look at it from the point of view of where ever you are in life. A college senior looks old to a freshman and a young alumni in their 20s who has left school and is in the work force seems even older. A 23 year old kid in his first job and who now has money for the first time may associate a 35 year old as “old” since they have generally grown beyond the “get drunk like we’re still in college” mentality.
30s are kind of a weird age. I’m 35 and I was talking to this girl (30) in a bar Sat who couldn’t believe I was 35 because she associates people at that age with looking like her dads friends. Of course I didn’t tell her for all intents and purposes we are about the same age.
I’m 32, old is 50+. This is of course subject to change over the next decade.
- Depends on the person but undeniably old to me is in the 70+ range.
“old” is what we call people who are doing something in their lives that is totally unacceptable to yourself–something that you have no emotional connection to and can never imagine yourself wanting to do.
So a 20 year old thinks anybody who talks about planning for retirement is old. An active 50 yr old thinks anybody who is retired , is old.
I recently visited an 83-year-old in the hospital, and he complained to me that he wanted to go home soon, because he couldn’t stand being around so many “old people”. He had been assigned to the geriatric ward, and the other patients there were mostly feeble minded. Since he was totally lucid, he felt no connection to the other people there, and no desire to be with them—so they were “old”
I’ll be 41 in a few weeks. Old is to me what pornography was to whichever SCotUS judge said it: “I’ll know it when I see it.” Having as many octogenarians and nonagenarians in the family as I had when I was growing up skews you a bit- so even when I was a teenager 45, 60- those weren’t old. 85 is old, but then when my grandfather was well over 80 he reshingled his roof by himself, while my 90 year old aunts still farmed and the like. OTOH, my father was 55 when he died and I do think of him as old, but that’s because he was born 50 and had a mental/personality age of 98 (not senile but cranky, resistant to change, etc.) when he died, while my mother was 70 and I rarely thought of her as old.
I have a 60 year old co-worker who’s married to a much younger woman and has several elementary school aged children at home, and somehow when you know him and he mentions that he has kids you automatically assume they’re little even though he’s more than old enough to have grandchildren older than his kids- he just seems young and you can’t imagine him being a grandfather. When my brother was 35 his off-days were spent on the golf course with retired bankers and talking investments and church matters with couples twice his age that he and his wife went on vacation with; it seemed non-sequitur that he had two small kids at home. Age is totally dependant on the person, there’s no stationary gauge.
Though when I’m old enough to draw a pension I’ll feel differently immediately. “I’M OLD AND I WANT MY DAMNED MONEY!”
I’m 58. My father is 85. “Old” begins somewhere in between.
I am at the point in my life, however, where physical deterioration is starting to make itself felt, albeit still in small ways. Sometimes that feels old.
Roddy
Missed the edit window, but I wanted to add that my GGGA “Grandma Weinke” lived to be 96. At 94-95, when I lived with her, she was much younger than many people. She had a fun-loving attitude, a mind sharper than a samurai sword, and loved the Sex Pistols. She rocked. I think she was the person who really proved to me that age has little to do with oldness.
I’ll hit 54 in January. When I turned 37, I suddenly felt like I was an adult - not sure why but it was most definitely a milestone.
Old will be when I need help more than I can give help. I’m hoping that won’t be till I’m in my 80s at least.
Well, shit, I resemble that!
I have to get into every one of these old-age threads. I turned 80 in August. I consider being old anybody 20 years older than I. I still hike, climb mountains, bike. Don’t party much though. 
BTW, DavidSimmonds (if that is the right spelling), has me beat by a year or two.
My sister (48 and retired) and I (almost 41) were recently talking about how odd it is that we are the oldest generation in our family. When I was a kid there were people who could remember where they were when they heard McKinley was shot, or who had teenagers when GONE WITH THE WIND came out. I had a great-uncle who died at 80 and was survived by his mother, and none of the elder generation had running water/electricity/cars when they were kids.
Now my sister and I, who never lived in a house without air conditioning and electric stoves and television and can’t even remember JFK being shot (I wasn’t born and my sister was too little to care) are from the oldest generation of the family.
A large part of that is the end of the extended family. I have an aunt in her 80s and her kids are older than us but they don’t count because we never see them and hear from them once or twice a year (Christmas and a wildcard) so they’re more like people we vaguely know than family. My niece and nephew have a grandmother who lives in Louisiana but otherwise they have no “tribe” like we did with elders and cousins and all.
I mention this because I think it has a lot to do with why so many Americans see 50 year olds as elderly. When you do genealogy research you’ll find that many of our grandparents and great-grandparents were much younger at 50 than we are at 30. Men and women frequently had grandchildren older than their youngest kids, they had many of the same entertainments as people half their age (no electronic media to really explode the generation gap), and an average household may have members ranging from 87 to infancy living in three or four rooms. I’m not holding up those days as halcyon by any means, but I do think we lost a lot when our extended family/clan system broke down and I think that respect (rather than shunning or fear of) age and understanding that age is a very relative thing are part of what we lost.
OTOH I’m really glad we got chamber pots out of our system.
Nicely said. I’ll be 37 next month, so I’m almost grown-up. 
My mother will be 72, but she isn’t old. I think 80+ is oldish, and 90 is definitely old.
Then again, ask my great-aunt, who married at 93, to a man who was 96. They didn’t think they were old, and they were married for five or six years before he died.