Oldies

 As a volunteer at the Cottonwoods Care Center when I lived in Kelowna, I would spend time chatting and listening to the residents. I remember once being with a spunky 94-year-old lady who, in a conspiratorial voice, told me, “You know, this place is full of old people.” It was obvious from the tone she used that she did not see herself as “one of them.”

Diane and I enjoy browsing in antiques stores. We were doing that while vacationing in a small New Hampshire town two summers ago when I turned to Diane and said, “What does it say about us that half the ‘antiques’ in this store are younger than we are?” In fact, I could recognize many of the items for sale as common objects from my childhood: glass Coke bottles, Life magazines with covers I remember seeing back then, toys that we used to play with as children…

This summer, I was taking a walk and strolled by a retirement center near where I live. Many of the residents were seated on the patio outside the residence and a band was getting ready to play music. I remember thinking to myself, “That’s nice. The band will no doubt be playing ‘oldies’ for them.” When they started playing, the first song they chose was ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon and, as the band leader invited the residents to do so, they all raised both arms to do a wave. I was a bit shell-shocked when I realized that a song that I had listened to as a 22-year-old had attained the status of an ‘oldie’!

Like my plucky lady at Cottonwoods, I have a hard time seeing myself as being old. Should I start practicing my grumpy old man routine? If there is a test to pass to graduate as one, I probably would fail it. Nobody would take me seriously if I started using expressions like “You young whippersnapper!”