Who You Calling Old?



The morning of my fortieth...before the trouble!

 Eleven years ago for my fortieth birthday Mark and I and another couple who are good friends of ours went to New Orleans to stay with my parents and celebrate "the big day". We had a wonderful time and enjoyed ourselves immensely. On one of our outings during our visit late one evening, the four of us were walking back from the infamous Bourbon Street laughing and talking. As we were walking a group of what I will call young thugs started calling out to us and yelled something about old lady, or old people and I took offense. I immediately responded to them, yelling, "WHO YOU CALL'IN OLD!" The rest of my group immediately went on high alert warning me to pipe down, but I was ticked and I was not going to tolerate that kind of talk. Fortunately, between the wisdom of the rest of my group and the fact that the young thugs moved on, we made it back to our car safely.

 This incident still gets me ramped up, and here is why. I am 51 years old, I do not feel any different than I did 30 years ago, but society continues to limit how I think of myself by using the word old in reference to my life experience. The word old is tossed around by my friends that are 8 and 9 years younger than me in reference to themselves. They will call themselves old and there I stand thinking "Honey if you're old, what does that make me?" I feel like the word old is used in an inappropriate way when describing people with advanced life experience and training. If it was not for us forward thinking trendsetters a lot of these people would not be striving so hard to call themselves 'Old". Apparently, these 40 nothings want what we highly experienced people have and they think they can have it by joining the Old Club. Here is a news flash for them, if you are joining the Old Club, you missed the boat and you need to go home.

 For years, when you would ask my Mom how she was doing, she would reply "Not bad for an old broad". That response drove me nuts. Perhaps because of that I am even more committed to youthful living. Why lower my life bar, when I can raise it? I will say that, in spite of the fact that I woke up today to an inch long wiry hair growing from the side of my chin. It was a bit of an emotional set back. I spent a good three minutes wondering when that hair grew there and deciding if anyone I sat near at a meeting last night might have witnessed the chink in my life experience armor. I will never know and it is best that I just move on.

I firmly believe that old is an emotion. I am pretty much an expert on emotion since I am practically the engineer of the emotional rollercoaster, that being said I say to all of you who are in advanced life experience, enjoy, and to those who are younger and longing to be in our shoes, "WHO YOU CALL'IN OLD?"