We boomers can’t get through a day without being reminded of how old we are. My friend Stephen Dixon posted this today on Facebook.
And images of teens flummoxed by the impenetrable mystery of a rotary telephone.
Given four minutes to make a call on a working telephone they failed.
Some reminders are gentle. Jadyne laughed when a young lady on a crowded BART train offered me her seat. A year or so later the tables turned. When we ask for senior discounts at movie theaters we aren’t ever “carded.” We’re dismayed, but not surprised, when our musical heroes die. The Killer, Jerry Lee Lewis recently passed. Last week it was Jeff Beck. A few days later it was David Crosby.
This list appeared this morning on Facebook.
24 are older than 76, my age. I was born in 1946, as were Linda Ronstadt and Barry Gibb. 16 are younger.
Paul Simon turns 82 in October. His former partner, Art Garfunkel, follows a month later. And of course, Tony Bennett will never die. Nor will the most famous ageless musician, Keith Richards.
Reminders show up in the difficulty we have in cutting toenails, putting on socks, things we forget, (not always a case of dementia), in the choice of putting up gutter guards so we don’t make the possibly fatal mistake of trying to clean our own gutters, the ladders we no longer use, the stairs we take one at a time, the banisters we hold when we go up and down stairs. We listen to NPR, we watch TV shows which advertise medicines for mesothelioma, COPD, high blood pressure, and watches with apps that will call the police if we can’t. We wear jackets in 70 degree weather, hats outside all the time. We leave both of them behind in restaurants. We post little notes on our glasses and phone cases because we know that we’ll leave them behind somewhere.
I would have hated this little girl.
We’re grateful that we don’t have any friends who would have done this, even if it was possible sixty years ago.
I’m a retired professional photographer. This question is from a currently employed photographer. I have no idea what this is all about.
We read books we’ve already read, sometimes without knowing it until we come across the part that we can recite from memory. Before we go on a trip we spend as much time parsing out our medications as we do packing our clothes. Our children can no longer fall asleep in the car when we’re driving. We’re reminded by the DMV that when our driver’s license expires we'll have to take the written test. And we panic, almost memorizing the pages, as we can’t bear the humiliation of our offspring finding out we failed. We read and ignore articles advising us not to drink. We’ve given up watching the Grammies because we don’t know any of the artists, any of their songs, and we can’t even pronounce their names or understand the words, if in fact, there are words in the songs. We think Tick-Tock has something to do with clocks. We’re reminded that New Year’s Eve really ends at 9pm. We’re aware that the actual passing of minutes and hours takes less time than it used to. When we’re asked, “What great thing happened to you today?” we answer truthfully, “I woke up.”