What do you think gets better with age?
They say that wine gets better with age, but I drink very little and have never found it interesting enough to study these things. I also have no head for alcohol and one sniff of the cork can have me singing Sea Shanties.
I never liked parties either. I’m a strange combination of outgoing and leave me alone. Equally happy both ways.
Life gets better. As a woman I’m past the age when having the perfect figure would have any impact at all. Well married. Try to keep myself in shape. More focused on fun and laughter. If I must get lines let them be earned well.
Attitude
Attitude to ageing is the most important thing. Believe in it and you’re screwed.
You’re told horror stories at every turn. Asked to believe that falling apart is non-negotiable. Your mind has to go. Your memory with it.
In a study I read in a book by Tony Buzan, it said that they did an IQ test on teenagers and people over the age of 50. It did take the older people longer to recall things, but their brains had to sift through far more storage. So the difference was nil when that was factored in.
They talk about life-long learning, but it’s important to remember that younger people are still learning regularly in any number of ways. School; work; sport; life. Encountering new things to challenge their minds. They’re more practised at remembering. You’ll need to keep challenging yourself.
A 30 year old only has to sift through 10,957.5 days worth of storage. A 60 year old 21,915 days. A 90 year old 32,872.5. It’s not a wonder that stuff gets lost in the mists of time. It’s in there somewhere. Keep working it.
Also life is immediate when you’re younger. The famous actors and singers are present. Try going back 50 years to remember who played the lead in the first Peter Pan film you ever saw.
Oddly I can go back 65 years and recall the Ugly Bug Ball with Burl Ives in the lead, singing “1 and 1 is 2, 2 and 2 is 4” and so on. It was my first film and it stuck. He was standing on a bridge looking at a river, with a child beside him.
There was always a shorter film before the main feature, and that was about a seal that got loose. I remember laughing so hard when he knocked everything over in a supermarket.
A few months ago my sister and I couldn’t dredge up the names of several actors, including Kevin Costner. Teenagers are now thinking “Who?” For the rest of the afternoon names kept spontaneously appearing in conversation. So it took a few hours for two of us to get all of them.
The older you get the stronger you must exercise mind control. Be careful about what you choose to believe in. Be very careful about what you choose to hear. Selective deafness is a critical defence against ageist trash talk.
Different eyes
You see the world through different eyes. You fuss less and enjoy more. It can be boring though.
The women’s clothes nowadays are so mundane, my mother and I had (a version of) this exact conversation 45 years ago.
“Oh MUM, clothes are amazing?”
“They’re cheap, boring, and hang badly I wouldn’t waste my money!”
Fast forward 45 years and I’m currently eating those words. In shops suitable for the older woman there seems to be one style, baggy. A small is about what a size 18 was when I was young. In other words I can barely find anything decent that doesn’t make me look like a discarded tent.
In the words of my sister, who was helping me to try to find brighter clothes “Okay do you want white with beige, beige with white, or black?”
The wonderful original shops were had were swallowed up by chain stores that then collapsed. Sole traders can’t afford the high streets. Shops are boarded up, or sell vapes. There are a number of charity shops (think overwhelming) but at least they have colourful older clothes in good condition that you would want to be seen in. Shopping there does some good too.
So it is swings and roundabouts. I never know which of those is the good thing though?
You go grey? You can dye your hair any colour you like! People think you shouldn’t? They need to think about something else.
This is the age where you can truly rebel and no one can do a thing about it. Get caught by the police walking naked down the street because it suddenly felt like fun, and you can claim a senior moment, cry a bit, and remind them that their gran might do this one day too. Let them settle you gently at home with a nice cup of tea, and carry on with your language course when they leave.
Age has its challenges, you lose a lot of beloved people and pets. But at least you knew them. It makes you the luckiest person in the world. Sad but so fortunate! Young people suffer loss too.
All in all life will get better if you let it. Wine not so much. It’s either trapped in a dark cellar appreciating in value when it used to be a grape out there in the sun, or disappears from a leaky glass only too quickly.
We’re luckier than wine, we have autonomy and don’t end up down the toilet. Unless we’re really drunk. 🤣
Tittering Thursday
Deb xx
Tittering is an old word for giggling quietly at absurdity. Plenty of that around.
Deb Hawken - Amorah 