Do people still use the phrase, “Act your age, not your shoe size?” Or, am I acting my age just my admitting I know it?
Recently,
a friend sent me a chain email about how our view of age changes over time. As
children and teens we love getting older, taking credit for half-years and
future ages. We say things like, I’m six and a half, I’m almost ten, I’m going
to be sixteen. Throughout adolescence, we set our sights on the Holy
Grail—becoming twenty-one.
From
there our language changes, we go over the hill at 30, push 40 and 50, reach
60, hit 70 and 80, make it to 90 and beyond.
I
followed the typical pattern, longing to be sweet sixteen, almost-adult
eighteen, and finally-legal twenty-one. In my late twenties, I fretted about
approaching the hill that was 30, but then right before that birthday, I got
engaged and we married later that year and for a long while, I stopped paying
much attention to my age.
That
is until two years ago, when I turned 60—and suddenly qualified for early
retirement. Seriously? Early retirement?
Me?
Sure,
on some level, I always knew I was getting older, but I was not acutely aware.
A fifty-something coworker summed it up when she learned I might early retire
and said, “Wow, you qualify? All these years, I thought you were my age.”
The
thing is I always thought I was her age, too!
Since
then, I’m more aware of the signposts around me that suggest I am getting old. Often,
when I am lugging and stacking firewood, or hauling and spreading a carload of
mulch, or riding my bike in traffic, I ask myself, "Should someone my age be
doing this?"
They
say that age is just a number, that we are as young as we feel and act. I say,
“Cool, that’s Totes McGotes!”
I
tweet, use an iPad, want a new bike for my birthday next week, and know how to
use Totes McGotes in a sentence.
How
old does that make me?
