I’ve always had off-kilter ideas about aging.
In high school, I said, “If I live to be old, I mean like old,like 40. I’ll start doing drugs. When you are that old, it doesn’t matter if you get addicted.”
By the time I hit the big four-oh, I’d taken a 180-degree turn on that opinion. Being an addict isn’t a good thing at any age. And, forty had become the new thirty. Being forty didn’t feel like I imagined old age should feel. I didn’t feel any different.
Two decades later, I don’t consider my sixty-year-old self as old. And still have no intention of nurturing an addiction to recreational drugs.
But, the signs I’m aging are there. When I check in at the gym, the kid at reception says ‘Whassup, Dude’ to the young guys in front of me. But, ‘Good evening, Sir’ to me. I guess the kid was brought up to respect his elders. Kudos to his parents.
I’m writing this because it’s late on a warm Monday morning. I’m sitting outside a cafe, sipping an iced coffee, and listening to a freshly curated workout playlist on my AirPods. Looking around, I think I’m the youngest person here. But I realize that the estimate depends on my perception.
First cut. Everyone sitting here is either retired or on vacation. These folks must be; it’s mid-morning on a workday.
Second cut. I’ve seen the same faces here daily since the warmer weather began. So, the other customers are probably like me and have retired. In the Bay Area, retirement is possible or almost impossible when you pass some threshold of decades. Retirement at a young age is rare—the proverbial ‘unicorn.’
Third cut. Everyone has grey hair. When I was working, I was one of only two guys with grey hair: I and one other. Now, I have a naked scalp under my baseball cap. Shaving my head became a thing shortly after I stopped working, and it no longer mattered if I looked like Vin Diesel gone to seed.
So, yeah, I’m still playing along with the idea that I must be the youngest here and, therefore, I’m not old. But it’s a close-run thing.