Editor’s Note: The year you turn 65 is kind of a milestone, and one can become rather obsessed with the subject of aging at this point. One thing I noticed recently is that I no longer call anyone “Mr.” There aren’t a whole lot of things you can say about getting older that are positive, but I’m trying here to look at the upside of going from older to old.

Shades of Gray

 

I turned 65 this year, which removed the “-er” from “older.” From infancy through middle age and beyond, aging is a given, but 65 officially designates a senior citizen.

We Baby Boomers are now talking about the things that have always consumed old people — the aches and pains, the medications and devices that keep us functioning, the things we can’t do anymore and the things we don’t even care about doing anymore. Meanwhile, the glass-half-full types are talking about their “bucket lists,” a concept described in a Jack Nicholson film hated by the critics, but beloved by those over 60.

Bucket lists involve the things we wish we’d done when we were young, and now pretend we’ll be doing in old age. Mine is pretty boring, because I’m realistic enough to concede that, if I didn’t surf the Banzai Pipeline, eat fugu or bungee jump off the Matterhorn by now, I probably won’t be doing it on my way to 70. Maybe I’ll learn to play bridge or the harmonica, but nothing too strenuous, dangerous or exciting.

One truism that’s not true is that for every loss there’s a gain. Over 65, the ratio is more like 10:1. However, life is problematic enough these days, so let’s look at the upside of the journey to dilapidation. (I’m sure you can come up with your own list too.)

You don’t have to respect your elders: Like most men of my generation, I was taught to respect older people and that age confers wisdom. But now that I’m old, do I really have elders anymore? I recently had an argument with an older guy that went totally off the rails. Although I didn’t respect his opinion, I felt a bit guilty that I was unable to conceal my contempt for someone senior to me.

On the other hand, he didn’t show me any respect either, and I’m old too. I’m skeptical that we receive any extra wisdom after 65, so I don’t see myself getting any smarter between now and the big dirt nap. Logically, this makes me at least the equal of my elders, who are even further down the road to decrepitude and incoherence than I am.

Corollary: You get respect you didn’t earn: I work at a company full of young people (my boss is young enough to be my daughter). I might be the oldest guy my fellow employees see walking the halls during their workday, because anyone older than me has probably retired or expired already.  

I was taught to open doors for a lady, but 25-year-old girls now open doors for me. It’s either a sign of respect or fear I might stroke out trying to do it myself. Young people often call me “sir” and politely defer to me, even when I have nothing perceptive to say. Or maybe they have enough manners to wait till I’m out of the room to roll their eyes.

Of course, this isn’t always the case.

It’s okay to get fat: One “critic” of my articles, who can’t refute them, regularly calls me “old” and “fat.” Because he’ll one day be the former and is already pretty much the latter, I can’t take this too seriously. Most of my friends have fattened up, even those who had trouble keeping weight on in their youth (yes, that really is a thing), so I’ve become less self-conscious about my own girth. These days, I regularly find myself in the company of enough aging blubber to fuel the whale oil lamps of Colonial Williamsburg.

Bad memories evolve into good stories: Years ago, back when I still exercised, I made some friends at a gym. When a twenty-something in our group was blindsided by his fiancée just weeks before their wedding — she slept with one of the ushers — we older guys tried to console him, and I came to two conclusions.

First, although it provides no comfort to the newly afflicted, nearly everyone over 25 has a similar experience that’s left him bruised and battered. Second, most youthful traumas gradually morph into amusing stories. As the pain disappears, you notice that the more you tell your story, the better you tell it, and the more you enjoy telling it. Many of life’s worst events become just another patch in the crazy quilt that makes all of us who we are.

 

There’s less need to worry about the future: This last one’s a paradox. The worst thing about your life story is that it will end badly, and not even the senior discount can soften that. As Woody Allen put it, “I’m not afraid of dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Bluesman Albert King concurred: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” And it’s getting closer every day.

Still, as your days dwindle down, the upside is that the window for bad things to happen is narrowing. Climate change will someday cause the ocean to drown Miami, but I’m likely to be gone before Long Island Sound fills my basement. The deficit will bankrupt the country, and we old people will bankrupt Social Security, but hopefully not before I’m bereft of life. Astronomers warn that an extinction-wielding asteroid will someday incinerate the Earth, but the odds it arrives before I check out diminish every day.  

Which brings me to the one serious item on my bucket list. Because my father, a veteran of the Greatest Generation, set a good example by “dying like a man,” I’d like to go bravely too — without whining, tears or groveling. The problem is I’m not at all sure I can pull that off. But at least I won’t have all that long to worry about it.

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