Random Thoughts on Aging
January 3rd 2009
My article for the January-February issue of TK Magazine
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I have very recently begun my 66th year. A 65th birthday has great societal significance in our culture. I guess I am officially an elder now.
- There is, apparently, a great data base of people’s birthdays out there. I don’t know where it is or how to access it, but insurance people are well acquainted with it. During the 4 months or so before my birthday, I received literature and phone calls from just about every agent on this continent telling me of the marvelous things they could do for me when I enrolled in Medicare. I dutifully created a file and tucked it all away with the best intentions of studying it carefully. Two weeks before my birthday, having read several novels during what should have been my studying time, I called the company which has been handling my health insurance for the past ten years, and told them to send me whatever I needed to sign.
- It won’t be long now before they will have to send my all my Social Security payments, no matter how much I earn.
- The political, ethical, and social ramifications of a Libertarian collecting Social Security and Medicare are staggering, but that’s an entire column in itself. One which I will almost certainly never write.
- I can remember clearly my thoughts the first time it occurred to me that I might live to the year 2000. I was probably 8, and it went something like this: I’ll be – let’s see – fifty six years old! Older than my parents are now. Maybe even older than my grandparents! Does anyone really live that long? Will I still be able to move around? See? Hear? Will I be a grandmother? Me? (Answers to younger self: Yes. Pretty much. Yes and yes, for which you will be ever so grateful. Not right then, but soon after. Yes, kid, you.)
- Had I lived 200 years ago, statistics say I would have had a slim chance of living this long. If I had, I would have been considered really old, and would almost certainly have been toothless, crippled with arthritis and old injuries and hard physical work, and in pain a great deal of the time. As it is, I consider myself middle aged (no matter what anyone else thinks), and I feel pretty good most of the time.
- My dentist credits our increase in longevity to modern dental care. If you can’t chew your food properly, he contends, nutrition becomes problematic, and health declines rapidly. I know he’s biased, but he probably has a point.
- Bill Clinton’s inauguration marked the first time I was older than the President of the United States. In 2009, both my kids will be constitutionally old enough to be elected President.
- This is a great time of life to take a look at what you have been incubating, perhaps unbeknownst even to you, below the surface. My degree is in mathematics, after all. The first time I wrote anything of consequence, beyond a classroom assignment, was less than five years ago.