What age do you consider is 'old'?

[Chrissy]

Yesterday I was watching a TV show about car clamping. An investigator was carefully scrutinising Blue Badges in parked cars. (Disabled Parking permits for those of you across the pond)
He had received information that a particular car was parked in the same disabled bay all day, every day. So the investigator checked up on the holder of the Blue Badge.

He then said 'The badge belongs to an elderly lady born in 1954'

That started me wondering, at exactly what age is someone 'old.' I hadn't yet considered myself as old....but maybe everyone else does?

[Cob]

Oh dear.

Might as well hand in my dinner-pail now then!

C.

[VertOlive]

Going only on numbers, certainly at 62, the woman in the story is beyond middle age ( or we should all expect to live to 124 if that is the "middle" of a lifespan!).

[jar]

Depends on the day. At fifty I still felt a kid. At 60 I realized I was finally learning how to think like an adult. At 70 I noticed I didn't get over minor aches, pains and colds as quickly as I used to. Maybe I am getting old.

[writingrav]

Someone born in 1954 is still a kid to me. I'm old.

[DaveBj]

Dunno -- maybe 10 years older than my age at any given moment? Wife and I are both 70. We have "blue badges" in both of our vehicles for my wife's crippling ailments, but even she seldom takes advantage.

I guess when I can't ride my road bike any more, then I'll consider myself old.

[mcorrea]

I'm 47, and sometimes I remember the time when my father was 47 and realize how old I am. I do feel a lot younger than he looked to me at the time, though.

Matias

[Scooby921]

It's common to see "senior citizens" discounts in the US which is usually anyone >= 55 years. The next level which one might consider "old" would be receipt of social security benefits upon retirement. I believe one must work to age 62 to be eligible for social security benefits.

[amk]

I have known boys of 18 who behave like old men with flat'ats who will suck a pint of beer in a corner all night, and 80 and 90 year olds who climb mountains or go to raves. It's all in the mind.

(I was much much older earlier this year than I am now - thanks to excellent health treatment I am now feeling like a spring chicken again instead of a not-very-well centenarian.)

[fqgouvea]

I was born in 1957 and sometimes feel old. Maybe it's because I'm a professor, constantly interacting with 20-year-olds who seem younger and more clueless every year.


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[datainadequate]

According to this forum, I'm a "Senior Member". And I keep having "senior moments" too, which is worrying.

[fqgouvea]

I was born in 1957 and sometimes feel old. Maybe it's because I'm a professor, constantly interacting with 20-year-olds who seem younger and more clueless every year.

On the other hand, my wife was born in 1951 and is not in any way elderly!

[Paddler]

It is probably mostly genetic. I received my "Golden Buckeye Card", granting me discounts at many stores at age 55. Thought it was pretty funny at the time, officially being an old fogart and still portaging a 65 pound canoe a mile through the woods. I am 70 now and would have to stop and rest a time or two on that mile. But, of my high school classmates, many are dead and many others are gimping around with steel hips and knees; some are dragging oxygen bottles on wheels and wearing the plastic hackamore that goes with it. Most of the rest are complaining of aches and pains and bad teeth. I still walk a couple of miles in the woods, most days, and call a murder of crows to me for a few slices of stale bread. Go figure.

[Hawk]

At 69, I am starting to slow down. Many people say I'm in my 50's. A friend of mine is in his 80's and is happy when I call him an old fart. I belong to AARP but no longer look at it's newsletter because it is about old people and that is depressing. I don't want to get old (even though I can't change that) but wonder what happened to the years that have gone by.... I see quite a few people my age or younger that seem proud to look, act and feel old; kind of a status symbol.

[oldstoat]

When I was a boy, 60 was old- my grandparents retired at that age and everyone said that that was the right age.
As a student, old people on the wards were 70
Now I have 80 year olds playing tennis and a lady who came in very embarrassed having hurt her knn dancing till midnight at her 90th birthday party.

[Cob]

Yes, reminds me of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians.

In the first section which concerns Cardinal Manning, Strachey refers to Newman thus:

"Newman was now an old man - he was sixty-three years of age. What had he to look forward to?"

That's how age was viewed in 1918! And those words have haunted me for some time...

Oh dear.

Cob

[fountainpenkid]

As a 19-year-old in a college setting, I think about these things very little, but to me it seems the actual age of a person is quite irrelevant to this question. Being old, to my eye, is something determined by one's behavior: what is their spirit like? What gives them purpose? How do they perceive themselves? One of my favorite violinists, Ivry Gitlis, turned 94 this summer. Yet I would struggle, as a fan, to call him "old." It is possible I'm too focused on connotation and not denotation?

[Lady Onogaro]

I was born in 1957 and sometimes feel old. Maybe it's because I'm a professor, constantly interacting with 20-year-olds who seem younger and more clueless every year.


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I don't know--I teach, too, and I think they keep me young (certainly on my toes). And students have always had the reputation of being clueless, haven't they? I was just reading Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night where Lord Peter and Harriet make the same observations about the young--and about their younger selves, too.

[Lady Onogaro]

As a 19-year-old in a college setting, I think about these things very little, but to me it seems the actual age of a person is quite irrelevant to this question. Being old, to my eye, is something determined by one's behavior: what is their spirit like? What gives them purpose? How do they perceive themselves? One of my favorite violinists, Ivry Gitlis, turned 94 this summer. Yet I would struggle, as a fan, to call him "old." It is possible I'm too focused on connotation and not denotation?

Thank you for this very wise post, Will.

[Lady Onogaro]

Yes, reminds me of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians.

In the first section which concerns Cardinal Manning, Strachey refers to Newman thus:

"Newman was now an old man - he was sixty-three years of age. What had he to look forward to?"

That's how age was viewed in 1918! And those words have haunted me for some time...

Oh dear.

Cob

As the old advertisement used to say, "[You're] not getting old; [you're] getting better."

I just saw an article that said Cher was going out on tour again, and she's 70.