I’m apparently at the point where everyone under about 25 looks like a kid. I was downtown last Friday for the first time in a while, near one of our local Universities, and saw two girls with University shirts on.
I know, intellectually, they must have been at least 18, but damn, they looked maybe 14 to me…
Finally got outdoors for a long walk yesterday. (Several previous weekends it was either raining raining raining or had an event I was promised for). I think of 20 milers as easy if not quite effortless. Or I’m accustomed to thinking of them that way. Another outing like yesterday and I’ll have to revise that somewhat.
Well, it was HOT, and the air was not good (Canadian forest fire smoke, condition orange or some such thing). I had to sit and rest quite a lot, and dove into a handful of establishments for cold beverages to try to cool down core body temp. The last pair of which were bars and some attitude adjustment accompanied the hydration to help me polish this excursion off.
Expected completion had been in the vicinity of 3:30, maybe 4:30 if there were stops. I didn’t make it onto the return-trip platform until 6.
I had a dream last night in which I had gray hair. Usually in my dreams I’m still young, but not any more I guess.
About a year and a half ago I did the same thing, but the sudden back spasm was so painful I passed-out (vasovagal syncope) and face-planted on the hardwood floor. At least I looked young enough to be in a bar fight in the following days.
Pretty good pun, but don’t make a halibut of it.
I will if you give me a fin.
I’m 72. Grey pubes.
This happened about seven or eight years ago. I retired two years ago. At the library cafe in which I worked the elevator to the lower level needed a security code to open. But on the lower level, the loading dock where I would enter. no code was needed to go up. So I had to let in delivery people. One day I made a joke to a young driver, while I was letting him go downstairs, saying : “You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave.” He didn’t get the reference. Talk about feeling old.
There is a cute young woman who timidly taps on the office door and asks if we have any trash.
I want to teach her to drive and pay her tuition.
Hey, puns are fine in moderation, but too many are going to give me a bad haddock.
Semi-hijack here:
My late father, who scanned the obits every day (and I of course do the same) told me that his observation was that if you live to be 70, you have an excellent chance of making it to 80. He thought there were more deaths of people in their 60s or 80s than in their 70s.
I don’t know how to prove or disprove his theory. If anybody can help me out, please do so.
/endhijack
Back to the OP: I recently completed a long (4000 mile) solo road trip. I love to drive, but this trip could very well be my last one. It’s not that much fun anymore to get out of a car after sitting in it for 3-4 hours.
A friend of mine said his doctor called it the “fatal fifties.” If you survived your fifties, you were statistically more likely to live much longer. That was about ten years ago, so I don’t know if the numbers have changed much.
Two of my neighbors died in the last couple of months. Both were old (82 and 79), but it makes you think.
He’s wrong. The official tables the US Social Security Administration uses for their mortality computations are here:
The very first column of data is the likelihood of a male dying when he’s that age. From age 0 to 7 it jumps around a bit. But from age 8 to age 119 when the table ends, you’re more likely to die this year than last, and more likely next year than this. Every year death in that year becomes more likely.
The corresponding female column jumps around from age 0 to 8, then from 9 to 119 it’s worse every year.
The incremental difference year to year isn’t that horrible. But it adds up year over year. A 60yo male has a 1.3% chance of dying that one year. A 70yo is up to 2.6%, while an 80yo is up to 6.5%, and a 90yo is up to 18%, etc. That’s per single year.
About 28% of males born won’t even make it to 60. Of the survivors to 60, roughly 17% of males age 60-69 will die. Of those survivors to age 70, roughly 34% of males age 70-79 will die. Of those survivors to age 80, roughly 69% of males age 80-89 will die. By age 90, only 14% of all men are still alive.
The grim reaper does not like people with big birthday cakes. Or maybe he likes them too well. In any case, too many candles is an excellent predictor of ones upcoming demise.
Now what does change as we age is what people die of.
The folks with weak constitutions, dangerous jobs, or chronic health problems tend to get culled by their 50s into early 60s.
Making it past there is indicative that you personally don’t have those problems. So you might well be one of the happy long-lived outliers. For the statistics to work out, for everyone who dies 20 years earlier than average, there needs to be one or more people who live ~20 longer than average.
How have I felt old recently?
Yesterday I attended a birthday party for my 3yo granddaughter. One 23 month old, the birthday girl, five other 3yos, a 6yo, three 30-something Mommies, wife and I. So 8 little kids, exactly one of whom can talk intelligibly. The frenzy was palpable. It was fun, it was noisy, it was happy, giddy, and exuberant. Meltdowns were few.
Just watching was real tiring. Playing with the kids was great fun. But 6-1/2 hours later wife and I were totally beat. The blessed silence on the 30 minute drive home was much needed.
I just recently ran into a guy I used to work with. I remember his daughter coming to the shop, cute little kid, probably 8 years old. He told me she’s now working at the local college. How TF has she grown up and finished college and gotten a job? I mean, I’m the same, just gotten a little slower…
That was my dad’s observation: any doubling of your age is subjectively the same duration.
I got the senior citizen discount on a haircut the other day without asking for it.
I don’t feel old very often. But when I do, I just slip on my Members Only jacket and parachute pants, then breakdance to the nearest arcade for a bracing game of Frogger.
Thanks for this. That’s an interesting table. Good to know that of all the guys like me who were born in 1953, 68% of us are still alive. But the odds of any of us dying in the next year are twice what they were just 10 years ago.