On Aging: Everyone's Doing It

As you know, our society does not highly favor old-ness.  If you're oldsauce, you're put up on the shelf like an outdated 8-track player.  People with grey hair should be well taken care of, even ancient writings of Proverbs (of the Bible) refer to grey hair as being a "crown of the aged".  (Better than the alternative, right?  Dead or bald?  Exactly.  Although based on the Hair Club for Men commercials, maybe some people would prefer dead to bald, but I digress.)

I consider myself to be 1/3 of the way through my life, so I'm old to teenagers, but beyond that I'm young-ish.  (Young-ish gets older with each passing year, doesn't it?)

Our society is pretty stupid.  Here's the thing.  Everyone is going to get old sometime. (Unless they die first, of course.) They should totally make it IN STYLE!  This is especially true for women.  Men already figured this out.  You see old dudes (like Bob Barker!) and people love him.  You see old ladies and you're like, "Aww, what are you doing today, knitting an afghan while sitting at your lace tablecloth covered table?"

In Hollywood, females are old when they're like 28.5.  Men are old when they're 68.5.  

I say we mess with this.

So here's what I do.  It kind of freaks out my hubby, but even more the better!  Sometimes I go out in the sun and get freckles.  At some point someone told me what I thought was a freckle on my hand was an age spot.  So after my initial reaction of, "Could this be?!  Is it possible!?", I began celebrating it.

I would proudly say to hubby,  "Look at my age spots!  Woo!"

He would say, "Stop it!"

"Age spots, age spots, age spots!!  HA HA HA!!!"

Now I just make it up anywhere and say "ooh la la" when people talk about me one day getting grey hair.

I'm still working on liking anything that may be wrinkly or saggy, but it's coming around.

I think you should just be happy with where you're at.  My offspring asked me if I wished I were their age.  HECK NO!  I have gotten this far in life, I do not want to have to to ANY of it over again.  

Just think of those pathetic ladies who dress like they're 25 and they're 70.  You see them from behind with long hair and spandex and then they turn sideways and you're shocked, horrified and repulsed.  Don't be an old lady who wishes she weren't.  It's so unattractive.  It's like you're saying, "I'm fighting for youth!  I'm losing!"

Now you don't have to go all homemade plaid jumper on me, but unless you're a 70 year old woman in a triathlon, you keep your spandex at home.

And anyway, I think it is much more impressive to be awesome when you're older.  When you're young, it's easy to run a 6:00 minute mile.  When you're old and you do it, you are pretty much a rockstar.  If you slalom water ski when you're young, whoop-tee-do.  When you're my 66 year-old Dad and you can slalom ski from a jumping shallow water start, rockstar.  When you're young and you run past me in a triathlon, go ahead you stupid jerk, fine.  But if you're old, I'm first going to slap myself and then cheer for you.

It's all perspective, I guess.  Wear it proudly.  After all, hopefully you are a lot less stupider than you were when you were 19.

Don't fight it.  Go boldly where you've never gone before.  Be a rockstar.  

Peace, love and age spots,
Ms. Daisy