I’ll be 67 next month. The most unexpected thing for me was still being alive at this point.
When I was a kid, we were betting each other on whether we’d still be alive to see 2000… the twenty-FIRST century!
Back in the '50s, you were SO old when you hit your own '50s that you might as well be dead…
I can’t believe how many OLD people I know! Where the hell did they come from?
I have a group of seven women friends who hang out together, have lunch, give each other moral support, etc. When I started the group in 1993, my arbitrary requirement was that you had to be at least 40 to be in it. Last week the youngest one of us turned 70. 
The oldest is well into her 80s. All I can say is WTF.
Did I already post this in this thread? If I did, don’t tell me. Another surprising thing is that I can’t remember shit.
It doesn’t seem like that long ago that I was wondering whether I’d live to be 70. Now I’m wondering whether I’ll live to be 80. Jesus!
Yep. I think I was about 8 when I first started thinking about the year 2000, and I thought “50??? Isn’t that almost dead? Hope I make it!”
No flying cars, but if anyone had told me about this World Wide Web stuff I sure as heck wouldn’t have believed them (and it’s mostly being used for what?), nor about any of these stories about laser surgery – and that doesn’t even get into GMOs and CRISPR and nanotechnology and imminent fusion plants (well, now only 15 years away instead of 20). Dark matter? Dark energy? What The Fook!?
I expected to need reading glasses, to get some joint pain, to have reduced endurance. I do not like these things, but c’mon, everybody knows it’s going to happen. But I did not realize I was going to need colonoscopies every few years just as a preventive screening measure.
I’m currently reading the book Elderhood. It is really well written. An eye opener.
I remember trying to imagine what a real-world version of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy would be like. A handheld device that has multiple encyclopaedias of information in it? How was that even possible, let alone how would it work?
I remember seeing the first demonstrations of touch-screens in the early 2000s and even that seemed like a fad science idea that wouldn’t be practically implemented. A couple of years later, enter the smart-phone. It seemed inevitable by then, yet simultaneously impossible.
I remember when the first Sony Walkman came out. Imagine, you can now record your own music on a 90-minute tape, and listen to it wherever you go! What’ll they think of next?
I wouldn’t have believed anyone telling me that I’d live to have THOUSANDS of hours of music, randomly-accessed at my fingertips.
I’m surprised at the degradation of my eyes. Just run-of-the-mill hardening of the lenses, I guess My siblings started wearing glasses in their 20s, and I was quite pleased to have made it into my 40s without any need for glasses. and then around 45 or so, I started having trouble reading bills in dimly lit restaurants. Now I need glasses to read my cell phone, or pretty much anything else. I expect it’ll get worse over time…
On the other hand, if you’d shown 30 year old me a clip of my “senior years”, I would’ve been shocked that it doesn’t look that different.
Pushing 70, but still on the same soccer team, still doing long bike rides, still listening to new Dylan and Neil Young albums and hanging out at music festivals… (oh, and still married to the same woman; given her temper and my weirdness, that’d shock Younger Me).
That’s laudable, but I think the getting up off the sofa thing is one of those things we have to largely accept.
I run 50km a week; I’m a pacer tonight for a half marathon. And I go to the gym 3 times a week, lifting heavier weights than most of the younglings there, including on the tricep press (which is probably the closest thing to the movement required to stand up from sitting).
But it still takes effort to get up from a low seated position. It’s interesting actually to speculate on why this is. It feels like some of the larger muscles have “gone to sleep” after sitting for a while, plus my legs don’t seem to have much strength at all when bent at an acute angle.
The most important thing in a maneuver like this is to move your center of gravity forward until it is OVER your legs as much as possible. Specifically, line up your knees with your ankles and shift your butt ever-forward–you’ll know when you get there-- then your legs, especially your glutes (butt muscles) can lift you.
Picture climbing out of a hammock. Sit on the edge then walk your legs back under you as far as you can until they are under your torso/butt/center of gravity. Then you can stand up normally.
Learned this in massage therapy school eons ago.
I can’t express how much I have appreciated this thread!
For me, since I hit 40, it’s the random aches and pains that I am surprised by. I also don’t bounce back from things the way I used to. And now, diverticulitis is a thing I have to worry about; I’ve had three flare-ups of it in the last two years.
I’ll add “surprised and distressed by.”
Way late on this reply, but you are not alone – I’ve been raging for ages about medical forms that always state: “Patient denies smoking (drinking)”. If the doctor doesn’t believe me when I say I don’t smoke, I have to assume they don’t believe me when I say my pain level is 8. Which brings us to that pet peeve – mention pain and watch the doctor’s face suddenly change to the “junkie looking for drugs” look, no matter that broken bones are protruding from your leg. It disturbs me that the physician/patient relationship is now adversarial.
That’s new to me. Thanks. I’ma have to give it a try. If it works standing up, I’ll try it sitting down, since that’s when the issue really gives me trouble.
As for other gettin’ old matters, I’m 17 days away from being eligible for Medicare, and 43 days away from my second hip replacement. I’m also 100# overweight (or 13” underheight), and, not to go into too much detail, I’m finding the idea of installing a bidet increasingly appealing. Maybe I can find a musical one that plays “Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing,” so I can imagine that I’m in the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland (I really miss Disneyland).
But AND I digress.
Yeah, I very intermittently get kidney stones not to mention I have another condition that very occasionally flares up and I like to have lower-dosage vicodin on hand for those short of immediate, but mostly short-term issues. They absolutely help. But I feel like I have to walk on eggshells every time I ask, which I’m careful to try to limit to once every 2-3 years for a bottle of twelve-twenty pills.
I’m obviously not abusing them at that consumption rate (and I never ask when I’m even out, just getting low). My doctor has never refused but it becomes a delicate ask every time with me trying not to come off as a wheedling drug-seeker and he trying to be a responsible gatekeeper. We both end up visibly uneasy about the whole thing. In a very low-key way I sort of dread the whole process.
Yeah, right. Well, if that’s true, you’re probably popular enough to get a volunteer any time you want.