The Age of Unreason?

Age is a relative thing. When you are seven, anyone over the age of twelve is grown up. And when you are sixteen, thirty is the gateway to drool and incontinence pads.

As an eight year old I recall being quite relieved when my twenty five year old teacher FINALLY married and had a baby. I feared if she didn’t hurry up, she would be waaaay too old.

When I reached twenty-five, myself, it was quite a different story. I felt young; my life stretched before me and the world was at my feet. Conversely, my approaching-their-thirties siblings seemed ‘mature-aged’ and my parents …. well … they were positively ancient!

Around this time, a relative died at age 55 and I actually thought, “Oh well, he’s had a good innings! “ A good innings? What was I thinking? Now that 50 looms in my not too distant future, 55 is like the prime of youth! At 55 you should be dancing til midnight, riding surf boards and seeing the world, not six foot under pushing up daisies. Goodness, how my perspective has changed!

And what has brought about this sudden interest in our varied perspectives of ageing?

Well, the other day I heard on the radio that a local girl had been invited to join a group of ‘young people’ to meet the Pope. Oh, how lovely I thought. A bunch of teenagers hanging out with the God Squad. I had visions of Benedict XVI, cross-legged in St Peter’s Square in hoodie and jeans, downing a Big Mac and chilling out with the kids.

My vision was short lived. The news report concluded by interviewing the ‘young woman’ in question.

At first, however, I thought they must have mistakenly interviewed her mother, for clearly the voice on the other end of the phone was not that of a teenager. In fact, without even setting eyes on our Little Miss Vatican 2010 I guessed she was somewhere in her late thirties. I was prepared to wager that if she was a teen, then the Pope was certainly no Catholic!

So what was this ‘young people’ thing all about? When I was thirty I was an adult mother of three with responsibilities and a mortgage. I didn’t consider myself to be exactly ‘old’ but to me ‘young’ was anything under 25.

But of course I have overlooked the Baby Boomer Factor. After all, if there’s one thing we BBs hate it’s to lose control. Thus ageing is not on our agenda. No, instead we have simply reinvented the standard stages of maturity to suit ourselves. ‘Old’ is becoming the new ‘young’.

‘Young’ is everything up to and including whatever age we Boomers currently are, and ‘old’ is anything beyond the next twenty years. We reserve the right to revisit and manipulate this to suit our egos and lifestyles, so be prepared to see 80 as the new 50; 50 as the new 30; 30 as the new 18; (16 as 16 - some things don’t get any better) and pre-pubescent tweenies will be the new toddlers. Babyhood will be retained in its current form, mainly because babies don’t give a toss about getting older (in fact they quite like being babies) and besides, going back to the womb might be a bit tricky.

So, anyway, I guess I don’t need to worry about the crows-feet or saggy bits that are coming my way. After all, thanks to our ageless Baby Boomers, these are about to become synonymous with eternal youth. In fact, it will be so cool to be wrinkled, all the kids will be wanting turkey-necks for Christmas. Their mantra will be ‘Old dudes ROCK!’ and we will approach our twilight years happy in the knowledge that we’ve still got ‘it’…..

……um….that’s if we can remember what ‘it’ actually is….