With this post, I want to clue you younger folks in on a deep secret. No matter how old you are you still think that you are no more than 30 years of age. Here I am about to end my 75th year on this earth and I still see at myself as that naive kid who went to Purdue University in 1965. No, I have not lost it! I realize every time I get up, and almost any other activity, that my body is withering away. I realize that I will some time in the future depend on a walker to get around. But, with some exceptions, I still think as I did in my thirties.

When I look in the mirror now, I simply don’t recognize the guy looking back. That reminds me of a quote I read when I visited Mark Twain’s home in Hannibal Missouri.

I have been in my retirement home for almost a year now, and that makes me more sensitive to the ways that older people are often portrayed in the media, and almost everywhere else. But, then again, my younger self is as biased about older people as most others. It has taken me quite a while to see people on scooters and walkers around me daily as the people they are. Maybe that is because I don’t want to think about the time when I am one of them.

One of the strongest messages I can give to those in midlife and before is that “You will be one of those old people, before you realize it”.

So,

Be nice to us old people, you will be one much sooner than you think.