When did you become ‘old’?

      In one of our recent weekly newsletters, we asked, do you think of yourself as old? And why is that and when did it start? Below is one response. Send your response to writingaboutourgeneration@gmail.com.

      I vividly remember when I first felt old … or when I was supposed to feel old.  

      I had been or earth for 63 years, and I was in New York’s Penn Station with my then-wife and three young kids.  One of the kids was having the kind of emergency in which a diaper is immediately required.  

      I ran off to an in-station variety store and breathlessly asked a young salesperson, “Where are the diapers”?  

      His chilling response was, “Are they for you”?  

      I am now 77 and, fortunately, they are still not for me.

As the self-appointed operator of my high school alumni association, and the publisher of its newsletter, I am often tasked with reporting deaths, and I often hear confidential stories of disease, so I am regularly confronted with what is coming for me, and all of us, eventually.  Stoically, I’m trying to put off the inevitable for as long as I can.

A friend of mine with health issues once said to me, “The only times I leave my apartment are to buy food and see doctors.” I hope that he enjoyed being indoors, and I hope that I never experience that situation.