I’m Old and I’m Proud

For much of my life, when I looked around a room, I would be pleased if I could convince myself, as I could upon occasion, that I was one of the younger people there.

There were two reasons for this, both kind of obvious, but let me—since what I’m about to say is less obvious—spell them out:

• First, there was the satisfaction of having accomplished something—something that qualified me for entry into that room—that people more experienced than I had accomplished.

• And, second, I felt in some way more vital, less stuck in the past, than the venerable people around me in that room.

I was, in other words, a bit of a youth chauvinist. Common enough then and now. Nothing too weird about that, right?

What’s weird, what’s not so obvious, is that when I look around a room nowadays, I sometimes find myself enjoying being one of the older people in that room. I take a certain satisfaction in being one of the wrinkled.

Part of it is just that I am proud of our generation. We didn’t win any wars, but we protested, many of us, a couple of rotten wars. And maybe we helped introduce, some of us, some good-humored informality and tolerance to the world.

And part of it is that I can—for the moment—still mostly manage to do many of the things those younger people in the room can do…albeit slower, albeit more awkwardly.

But there is something else. And it has to be said carefully.

I certainly do not in any sense take credit for having, so far, avoided the illnesses (AIDS in particular), rogue automobiles, AK-47s and other random tragedies that denied others in our generation, including a couple of my friends, the great privilege of growing old.

That was mostly random.

Congratulating yourself on becoming rather old is a bit like being proud of having a full head of hair (long a sore spot of mine). I mean, what did you do to deserve it?

And I certainly realize that old people are susceptible to excess self-satisfaction, to being pigheaded or even acting like assholes. Ipso facto: Donald Trump.

Nonetheless—and at the risk of sounding like Frank Sinatra singing Jacques Brel—I am pleased that I have seen some things (far and wide) and done some things (foolish and wise), even accumulated some scars (laughed and cried).

I am pleased, too, that maybe, in spite of myself, along the way I have learned some things—even if calling to mind some of that alleged wisdom is getting more difficult.

And I am pleased that, as a now finally old person, I can say that in my shy, clumsy way I have deeply known and loved, and been known and loved by, some people.

I can even—on a good day, in front of a kind mirror—take some satisfaction in having achieved these wrinkles.

Indeed, while thinking through all this I find myself talking to a fellow possessor of wrinkles on the subway. (I seem to fall into such conversations with increasing frequency lately.) “Well, I’m 74,” he announces at some point.

“I got that beat,” I shoot back, smugly.

I’ve become something of a geezer chauvinist.