You May Be Ageist If…
Most stories about ageism aren’t written by the aged. This one is.
As a writer and an old person, I’ve written about aging many times, but I’ve never written an entire piece about ageism itself. I’ve left it alone, I suppose because I thought it was a subject best left to the experts, but who is more expert at aging than someone who has leaped past the aging part and is now at the finish line — the aged?
Note that ‘aged’ as regards ‘elderly’ is pronounced ‘age ed’ , two syllables, and not ‘aged’, as in, ‘ripened’.
It astonishes and often amuses my younger friends that I’m 83 and still able to stand upright and carry on a conversation. I’m like their walking, talking monument to acceptable longevity. There’s apparently a stopping point, though. When they learn that my husband, still smart, still funny, still standing, is 88, in their minds they’re already fitting him for a funeral suit. They dismiss him with a virtual undisguised pat on the head and a sad goodbye, and don’t consider it odd at all.
Those of us in our seventies, eighties, nineties, and beyond are no longer seen as viable citizens of our communities. We aren’t asked to join in or to help out, and we certainly can’t work. We’re seen as too fragile now…
