Well I think I must have my oldster card revoked!
I mean, shit, helluvalot I learned from Howlin’ Wolf’s records and his band(s), but I only associate that with the Lee Dorsey/Allen Toussaint record.
Had no idea, really.
I’m 63 and other than seeing a few wrinkles and a few grays, I don’t see myself as old yet. I will sometimes think to myself, “I’m 63!!! how is that possible?” I don’t take any prescription meds or any supplements. I have no aches or pains other than a case of plantar fasciitis that will rear its ugly head once in a while. It has never slowed me down though. I slipped on some ice last February and hurt my shoulder. I’m sure it’s a rotator cuff injury. It’s about 75% improved. It has taken a long time, but like I said it’s getting better. I’m at a good weight. I don’t eat a perfectly balanced diet. But I did give up snacking in between meals years ago.
I walk at least 5 miles every day. I don’t drink, smoke or use any recreational drugs. Never have other than stupid teenage drinking and then as an adult a beer once in a while, but haven’t even had that in over 10 years.
I’m not sure what I can no longer do. I think of that sometimes. Could I do a summersault? I think so. A cartwheel? Not sure. One thing is that I can no longer stay up late. I like to be in bed by 9. But I am up at 5 to walk the dogs, so I guess if I slept in later, maybe I could stay up later.
So far, I’m doing ok. I hope I get at least 10 more years of doing ok!
Last year I was walking to my office in Manhattan and through a combination of new dress shoes with no traction and some slippery “mystery goo” on the crosswalk ramp, I went down like an old woman. All these people were coming up to me like “sir all you ok?!”
I was fine, but I was kind of wishing New Yorkers would just go back to ignoring people!
That’s amazing, and probably why you’re in such great health. Kudos!
How do you do it? How do you make time for it, not get bored, force yourself out every day, etc.?
I have three dogs that have to be walked so they keep me going. The last time I was dogless, right after covid (and for only 3 months!), I walked by myself. It’s become a habit. I started my walking about 17 years ago. The dog we had at the time was being destructive and just needed more exercise. So I started walking him 2 miles in the morning and 2 miles after work. It made a big difference for both of us, he calmed down considerably and I lost 25 lbs! I also walked by myself during my lunch breaks. Now with three big, strong dogs I have to walk each one on a leash separately in the morning. So that adds up to a little over 3 miles. Then when I come home, I take them behind our house on our trails in the wood where they’re off leash and can run to their hearts content. Like I said, it’s become a habit and my day doesn’t feel right if I miss a walk.
That sounds really nice. I’ve always wanted a dog, but never lived in a place/apartment long enough that allowed them 
Hopefully someday!
I woke up with my right knee and left shoulder hurting. I did nothing yesterday to cause it. Random old man pain caused by sleeping.
See that is an advantage to exercising regularly! You get the same ache but you get to delude yourself that is from yesterday’s exercise rather than the old age ache it really is! 
Hah - same here (well, except old lady vs old man).
I don’t recall any specific thing or trend, honestly, it kinda creeps up on you gradually. But in the last 6+ years I have noticed a major decrease in stamina, which is not helped by those aches, and so on.
I had an “old experience” just today: I put in to get my pension started from a prior employer. Delaying one part of it (it’s a defined benefit plan, albeit for a pittance) would not increase the monthly benefit. Delaying the other one, which is market-based, would pose the risk of the market tanking and the account would lose value, thus reducing the annuity amount (it’s based on the value at the time I apply for it).
There are realizations that long-term plans and dreams would need to change. Like my ideal house looks quite different from what I envisioned 10 years ago. My career goals have changed from “learn new stuff” to “hang onto the current project as long as they’ll have me, then fuck it”.
When I was around 30 I came to the realization that what I wanted for my birthday was not some fun new toy. What I really wanted was a new vacuum cleaner to replace the cheap one I’d had since I got my first apartment. That might have been the first time I felt, if not “old”, at least not young anymore. Like I was “adulting”, as my generation says.
Then there was the time when my next door neighbors were doing some landscaping work, and had a big dirt pile in their front yard. The neighbor kids were riding their bikes up the dirt pile, jumping it, and landing on my front lawn, making tire marks on the grass. So I had to literally tell those damn kids to get off my lawn.
Had another “Man, i’m old” moment earlier in the week when I bought a Centrum Silver multivitamin. There were a couple legitimate non-age reason to buy it: lots of B12 which i’ve needed for quite some time, and they’ve reformulated the generic multivitamin to taste horrible. One legitimate non-age reason to not want to buy it: more expensive than generics.
However, not only did I not want to acknowledge that I am over 50, I also did not want to risk buying a multivitamin that was secretly gummy, since they stick to my teeth too much, and gummy vitamins are pandering to post-gen-xers who fondly remember gummy vitamins from their youth, which hadn’t even been invented yet when I partook in a diet of Flintstones chewables.
First time I couldn’t make it up my favourite mountain walk without sitting for a long break, halfway up and down.
Any music thread on the Straight Dope -especially whenever any rockist dinosaur trots out the tired “rap isn’t real music” or “all modern pop songs are written by one guy” bullshit.
Obviously, crippling pains about ligaments and tendons. Crepitus about the knees. Failing memory about obvious things.
Mostly what makes me feel old is an instinctive hatred of the “new breed”…whatever they’re called.
I’m well aware that young people can have some insight, provided they are aware of their predecessors, that can hardly be matched by their betters in years.
But, yet, I rarely encounter it.
Having become dismissive to anybody with, e.g., ear gauges, or skateboards, or rent-a-scooters…
To me that’s when I feel old.
And yet, as a Gen-Xer, some lady with all kinds of piercings and shaved head and stuff, sitting next to me, we’ll have an hour’s worth of good conversation.
Not really the appearance of being “freaky”…that was old when even I was not born…it’s an attitude and a vocabulary.
Can’t explain…but it would make for a good study if one knows any sociologists. Bourdieu’s dead, so, you know, someone else.
Young people rarely have insight because they generally don’t have any real-world experience. And it’s a bit frustrating how society seems to defer to younger generations like they have it all figured out because they don’t. Young people have the benefit of believing they always have time to change or fix their mistakes.
At 52, I don’t know why, but for some reason I’ve started feeling “old” over the past few years. Like instead of enjoying the benefit of decades building a career, interests, relationships with friends and family, it feels more like these things are slowly fading away. Every year, things seems to get perceptively “worse”. My job is a bit more frustrating. My relationship with my wife seems to be getting shitter and she just wants to retreat into her job and time with her weird family. My kids make me more and more anxious every year.
So I’m not sure how to fix all that.
What really makes me feel old is looking at how everyone looks who grew up with me. All my childhood friends, brothers, and sister all look older than the way I feel. Most of them are terribly out of shape with wrinkles and grey/balding hair.
I went to my 30 year high school reunion recently, holy snikes all those guys looks old as dirt! Surely I don’t look ‘that old,’ right guys?
Of course I do.
One thing that makes me feel old is when I think back at obsolete jobs I had in the past.
I worked in the printed circuit board industry in high school, at a time when computers were only used for managing the finances of the business, but every other aspect was manual.
I was a projectionist in the late 1980s, pretty much at the knee of the curve of technical advances in analog film…some stuff, like digital sound, came later, but the “bones” of the process were all in place by the late 1970s.
Now both of those jobs are fully digital and would be all but unrecognizable to younger me.
I never had the courage to attend a high school reunion. However, with a solid 5mi/day running habit, I am pretty confident that at least today I wouldn’t do badly; all bets are off for the future. It really is sad seeing people who are my same age and saying “Wow, these folks are old!”
I hear you, I thought the samething. I’m in excellent shape for my age. I’m not really overweight or out of shape, but I’m sure I still look old to others, just in different ways. To think otherwise is hubris.
That was my take away
Absolutely. Trim and fit maybe, but I’m still a graybeard!
The other day at church one of the singers came up to me as I was carrying my grandson around after our set, and she very cautiously asked “Grandson?”
To which I immediately beamed and said “Yes, ma’am!”
She had obviously been struggling with whether this obviously old guy would have a two-year-old son.
The other stuff just sucks, like everyone else, things just don’t function as smoothly as they used to. An injury that would have healed in a few days as a teen takes weeks, and so on.
The other day I was reading some article about balding and it was “You need to shave your head and grow a beard and you’ll look seven years younger than if you’re balding!”. Except my hair on my head is still its lifelong light brown color and my beard is a salt & pepper thing leaning much more towards salt at this point. I’m not sure if only displaying my graybeard is going to make me look as youthful as they think.
Fortunately for my vanity, my hair on top still fluffs enough to cover the real estate. It’s when it’s wet or gets long enough to lay flat that you can really see how sparse it’s getting. It’s not the correct “male pattern baldness” for medication though and I don’t really want to be taking pills or ointments for the rest of my days if I don’t need to anyway.