I have to hold the handrail when I go down stairs.
A similar thing happened a few years before I retired. A local internet outage had the younglings up in arms. In our morning meeting, the question went around the table: “What’s your longest time without the internet?”. When it got to me, most answers were in hours. I answered: “43 years.”
To their credit, they were really curious about the “before times” and we had an interesting Q&A.
I don’t remember when it was, but I was in my 50s and a coworker and I were driving to a meeting somewhere in DC. I mentioned the Air Florida crash of January 1982 and how I was on the far end of the bridge when the plane hit. The kid I was driving looked at me in confusion. That’s when I realized that he wasn’t born when that happened. YOIKS!
Then there was my post-retirement job where I was sharing an office with an engineer who was young enough to be my grandson! YOIKS again!!
Feeling young-ish? Well, so far I can still manage most of my own yard work. I do tire a bit faster than I used to - 6 hours of weeding and raking doesn’t happen any more, but I think I do OK for 70.
I’m fifty-one, to get that out of the way.
My dad threw out his back due to pinched nerves when he was forty. I was thirty or so when I had to get CT scans to confirm the bulging discs in my own back. That didn’t help. For more than a decade I’ve been watching the grey hair tumble down the sheet tied around my neck as I sit in the hairstylist’s chair. My doctor says I really need to crack down on my bad cholesterol. I do photography on the side, and my favorite model to work with was born when I was in grad school. So there’s all that.
But…speaking of my dad, he always seemed “old” when I was growing up. By the time he was laid up with that bad back he was already doing the comb-over, and had settled into a pretty dull suburban family life. By that age his music tastes ran to Wal-Mart Country Music and annoying bland jazz. Generally, he liked his culture with all the edges sanded off: didn’t like movies that were challenging or profane, didn’t like television much edgier than a Johnny Carson monologue.
I, on the other hand, drive seven hours to get to comicons, go to loud rock concerts all year, and am covered in tattoos. As I’ve said here before, a lot of my favorite music sounds like someone tipped over the china cabinet. I have old man aches and pains from time to time, and I’ve had mild tinnitus since my mid-thirties (I blame concerts by Bob Mould and Laibach for much of it), but I still don’t feel, or act, as old as my dad did when he was ten or even fifteen years younger than I am now. So I guess I feel “young” by those standards? I don’t feel like a poser for my “youthful” interests…I genuinely like that stuff.
In our 50s, we did a major remodel of our kitchen and both bathrooms, added a bathroom in the basement - in fact built an apartment in the basement - built 2 decks, and maintained an older sailboat. OK, we did hire someone to lay the carpet, but we pounded nails and pulled wires ourselves, and learnd to hate sheetrock work. Now, those kind of chores begin with a Google search of local contractors. There comes a point when the best tool for the job is plastic.
I’ve just turned 50.
I’m clearly not as sharp as I used to be. I forget things, drop stuff, leave doors and drawers open, and cannot focus for a long time anymore. My speech is getting slurred and less well-structured. I sometimes blank on everyday words. In the past few days, I’ve attributed a famous Satie piano piece to Debussy, got a couple of country flags mixed up, and confidently referred to Alice Carroll, the famous author. Twice.
On the plus side, I’m still rather fit, and many people have expressed surprise at my age, thinking I was in my early- to mid-40s.
Love it.
Similar to:
“What’s the longest period of time you’ve gone without a drink?”
“14 years”
Mrs. J. and I text back and forth, just like the young people!
Try holding hands across the table while seated at a restaurant. Current GF and I love doing that. It makes you feel young. And fun.
I used to do it with my late wife and often middle-aged waitress types would say “That’s so cute! I haven’t seen that in ages. How long have you two been together?” At that point we were age 50-something and I expect the waitperson was thinking we were new friends. Our answer “30 years” usually surprised them.
I generally still feel young. There isn’t a whole lot I was doing in my 20s that I’m not doing now aside from maybe over-drinking and accumulating unsustainable consumer debt. I’m still mobile and active and able to put in a day’s work in the yard or around the house. Still enjoy my RPG group and playing some video games or able to spend a day out and about without trouble.
I do notice that pounds come off more slowly than even 5-6 years ago (51 years old) and sometimes I get a random pain but nothing that lays me up. Those moments help remind me that I’m not 25 any longer but I don’t feel like an old man either.
Music is a funny one. On one hand, I’m constantly listening to new music and finding new artists I enjoy. On the other hand, I have pretty limited interest in attending a small venue, general admission, standing only show to spend three hours with a bunch of 20 year olds and see these artists in person. In my 40s, it was less of a thing but now it just doesn’t strike me as a way to spend my Friday night.
I first felt “old” during a college summer job where they printed Playboys, and I saw the first Playmate (Lisa Welch) who was younger than me! In a college hoops league while in law school, my wife was scorekeeper and the other team asked her if she was “with those old guys”! 
Then, after college it was weird to see college and pro athletes who were younger than me.
But realistically, I was in my best physical shape around age 40. Fighting competitively, running marathons. (A couple of injuries from both of those activities contributed to my later feeling old.). I was quite vital in my career. In my 40s, tho, it became clear that my teenaged son was fitter than I. I remember one day when we were biking. He would speed off and then wait for me and say, “What kept you, old man?!” Rather than try to fight a losing battle, I conceded that he was fitter than I.
Around age 50, I started feeling really physically OLD for the first time. Just the aches and pains that I’d never experienced before. Couldn’t run anymore, so limited myself to swimming and biking. I’ve golfed since I was a young teen, and used to be pretty decent. A couple of years ago I lost considerable distance due to hip arthritis - which is kind of hard to ignore. Will see if I work on my short game enough to make up for that.
More recently, past 60, I’ve felt less mentally agile. I’m less interested in current events as so much seems like reworkings of what I’ve already experienced and considered. Been there, done that. Also, with passage of time my job so clearly just moving widgets, with no real cumulative effect. Most recently, planning for retirement (in 3-ish years) makes clear that I am entering the final chapter, and that younger generations are now more vital.
Not much of anything makes me feel young these days. I get a lot of enjoyment doing certain things, but I don’t feel young when doing those things.
10 years ago when I was 35 and realized that internet cafes had become a thing of the past.
When I tally up the number of friends, classmates, ex-girlfriends, and relatives who have died, most younger than me at the time, that makes me feel old. And lucky, no matter what ails me right now.
When I realized the people I was hiring for work were born after I graduated from high school. Yikes
When I had to have a knee replaced a couple of years ago. Oldness is worse now that I don’t have my woodshop to putter in or things to fix in the house. I quite literally have nothing to do other than make meals and fart around on the internet. There was a flurry of things to do when we first moved here, especially in getting the kitchen set up and some shelving in the living room. But the past year has been deadly dull and I’m feeling the 77 years.
At work (software) I heard a younger colleague talking about how “compiled languages are the new trend in the software industry.”
Then I realized that most software developers nowadays would need to be at least mid-career to be fully conscious of a time when compiling your own code was just a routine expectation of the job.
They are of course aware that compilers exist, but it’s not something they ever think about, because they’re mostly web developers coding in interpreted languages that run on platforms compiled and supplied by others. But as those tools begin to show their age and baggage, the new generation of compiled languages are now the hip, scrappy upstarts, so that’s where the cool kids want to be now (IMO a very good thing, to be clear).
I’m still not that old, but does hearing bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana on the local “classic rock” station count?
Today is my 70th birthday and my hair is still not gray, it is naturally brown.
I meet and work with tons of Chinese people from around Asia. Nowadays the majority of whom I meet, were not born when I first lived in Taiwan in 1983. The guidebook I wrote to Southwest China, published in early 1987, may as well be a historic artifact to most of the Chinese I meet these days.
My feet. First, gravity sucks and many people like me have to start wearing wide shoes around 60. Second, I have arthritis is my big left toe. It’s not painful, but the foot is permanently swollen. As my doc said, when it gets too bad, we will just cut it out. Fast forward, there is no cartlidge, and the only thing holding my big toe together is the arthritis. Already scheduled to cut that out and fuse the bones at the end of March.
For the other stuff, to paraphrase Kinky Friedman: “You’re as young as the partner you feel.” Which would take 14 years off. 
I have a season pass and snowboard between 30-50 times/season depending on the conditions. I qualify for the 25% geezer discount, and it becomes 50% at 70, and my goal is to get the free season pass at 80!
I did 4 years of kenpo karate in university, and was pretty decent. So, more than 40 years later, I found a kenpo school and over the past 6 months relearned the short and long form kata’s 1, 2 & 3. Simultaneously makes me feel old and young again. Certainly no where near the level I used to be at, but being able to do all 6 kata’s feels great. Then there is one of the 20 something black belts in the dojo, who says “I would love to spar with you one of these days.” And I’m thinking not only are my sparring days over, but you would have kicked my ass on my best day when I was 22.
Here in California, I just had a thought. It’s midnight on the east coast. I can go to bed now.
Man, I’m old.