Image by Maria Teneva on Unsplash.
We see a lot of articles by people who say, “I don’t recognize myself as I get older.”
I recognize myself easily. The problem comes when other people don’t recognize it’s about me as a person who’s always been this way. They insist that I’m this way “because you’re getting old.”
One day I was standing on a street corner, waiting for a Lyft. A stranger asked me if I was okay. “Are you lost?” she said.
Another time I was watching for a bus when a stranger came up to me. “Are you lost? Do you need directions?” she asked helpfully.
I wasn’t lost I just looked old to them. They were “helping an old person.”
Even worse, I have qualities associated with “older” people. I’ve had them since I was six, not sixty.
Take falling, for example. According to the CDC, nearly 38,000 “older adults died from “unintentional falls.” People over 45 report anywhere from zero to 76 “unintentional falls..” More than 1 in 4 adults over 65 have at least one “unintentional fall” per year.
I looked at those statistics with fear–not of falling, but of being labeled a fall risk. Ever since I can remember, even as a child, I’ve had “unintentional falls.” They’re not due to balance. My falls are due to what we used to call “clumsiness.” I trip over cracks in the road. I don’t see it coming. Suddenly I’m on the ground, usually unharmed. Or at least, not seriously harmed.
I do get more seriously injured as I get older. I work out and I do study “balance exercises.” But I’ll probably fall at least once a year until the day I die. Hopefully, I won’t need more medical help.
Then there are stairs. I’ve never walked down a flight without holding on to a railing, even when was six or seven. I’ve always had a phobia around stairs. Heights are fine: just get me up there. Now people assume it’s because I’m “old.”
And I’ve always been absent-minded. When I was teaching they’d call me “an absent-minded professor.” Now I’m supposed to worry about cognitive deficits.
There are lots of other things, like being a good housekeeper and being organized.
In my book I quote sources that talk about this phenomenon. For instance, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on December 11, 2018: The Loneliest Generation by Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg. Apparently 8.3% of the Baby Boomers and 7.2% of the Silent Generation “reported they often felt lonely.” In comparison, 5.6% of Gen Xers and 2.1% of millennials reported they often felt lonely.
These statistics might seem to tell a sad story for the older people, but there’s only a 1.6% difference between Gen X and the Silent Generation, and only a 2.7% difference between Gen X and the Boomers.
Yet there’s the headline: older people are lonely. All of them. So if you see an “older person” eating alone, invite them over to join you. If they’re like me, they’ll be offended at the interruption. If I’m eating alone in a restaurant I want to enjoy a good book, not talk to strangers.
What are your “old person” things you carry forward? Have you grown into some things you’ve always had?
And most important, how do you explain these events to doctors? To friends? To strangers? Or should we even try?
