A Lighter View
Age a relative thing
By K.E.H. Stagg

Nov. 19, 2009

I’m within spitting distance of the age my grandparents were when I thought they were really old. In the interests of full disclosure, I was in kindergarten when I viewed them as being practically prehistoric; in fact, they were in their early 50s.

My view of Mom and Dad is that they were just plain old. I’d worked out that since Mom had me at the age of 28 and I was then 4 years old myself, it was going to take me 25 more years to pass her up. That wonky math logic was the precursor of things to come, had I but known it. Probably even the slowest kindergartner these days can work out that even though it would take me 25 years to reach the age of 29, Mom was always going to be 28 years older than me. But I digress!

The youngest old people I knew during kindergarten were the oldest kids in the private school I then attended. Without ever having been told, I just knew they were graduating and getting married. Wrong again! It turns out that they were all graduating to high school; probably none of the 14-year-olds left private school for wedded bliss, despite it having been the wild and crazy 1960s.

The oldest old person I knew back then was my great-grandma, who was so ancient in my view she had probably written in cuneiform symbols on a stone tablet when she attended kindergarten. I had her pegged at 94, the age she actually reached just prior to her death 10 years later.

Now when I’m asked, “Is s/he young?” I ask for more details: “Young as compared to what?” because one of the strange phenomenon in life is that “young” grows older every passing year, pretty much hand-in-hand with my aging process. A woman at my church who’s in her 90’s looks like she’s 60-something. I could possibly be persuaded to believe that she’d reached her early 70’s—but only just! The current president and first lady are frequently described as a “young couple,” and are in their late forties. My mom died at the young age of 69.

People who throw “over the hill” parties for friends reaching 40 are an embarrassment. For crying out loud! You’re not over the hill until you’re 80 at least, and even that is up for negotiation.

By today’s standards and my own reckoning, I’m brimming with youth. And I fully intend to keep it that way.