About four years ago I wrote
this essay Now, because of an upsetting incident that led to my receiving some upsetting (along with some helpful) feedback online, I started thinking about a number of age-related issues from a different perspective. As I've written before, ageism has upset me in ways that sexism or homophobia never did. But I'm also upset by its absence, or rather the absence of a level of deference and respect that I just assumed I would be getting once I was over a certain age.
On the same site where I posted my query (it was about the infantile man - my age - in the laundry room whom I have come to detest to a degree that is beginning to scare me; I just shouldn't let him rent any space in my head, but then of course he's my "ghost of bad choices past") a woman posted a question as to whether people become more conservative as they age. My answer to that is a resounding "yes"! Although I am not speaking politically. I'm not even speaking socio-politically; I still feel the same way about reproductive choice and the separation of Church and State, for example. What I mean is that I really really really think the world would be a better place if people behaved more formally in public (which includes treating older people with concern and respect) as well as more formally with
each other if they are not close friends.
When I speak of the absence of ageism upsetting me, I mean things like the prevalent idea that if a school age child (one too big to ride the bus for free and sit on one's lap) wants to sit on the bus, everyone else can go to Hell. And often the worst offenders are "grandmas" my age!! On several occasions I have seen a woman my age stand up so that her ten-year-old granddaughter can sit. What is going on there?? And it isn't just a question of abstract politeness. From the time I was a grade schooler my mother drummed it into my head that people "grandma's age" (this meant over 50 back then) have a lot of "aches and pains" and need to sit down, in fact need to be comfortable generally, and that
I , a healthy able-bodied youngster, did not. It didn't matter if I was "tired". Many of these oldsters had worked hard for their whole lives. My grandmother had stood on her feet all day in Macy's and my grandfather had been a waiter. Now I am lucky to get a seat and to do that I have to keep an eagle eye and be relatively fleet of foot. I remember once trying to board a bus when a woman and her 8-10 year old tried to push ahead of me and I pushed ahead of them and said "Age before Beauty and before 'cuties' too." I feel perfectly justified in doing that. On the other hand, if I see someone who looks older than I am (or who is walking with a cane) I will step back and in fact will gladly stand on my arthritic hips for the entire bus trip so that they don't have to.
Then there's language. I mean if young people are talking to each other that's one thing, but I really don't think it's appropriate to get into an online quarrel with someone twice your age and say things like "tough s**t that you're so butt-hurt". My oh my, have things deteriorated. I still might cuss if I dropped hot coffee on myself, or got all the way somewhere suddenly realizing that I left my phone (or my music binder) at home, but that's about it. Now I hear people using the word "s**t" to mean everything from "belongings" to "life affairs".
Then there's the issue of generation, which is different from age. I suppose since we're the first generation that refused to grow up (remember "Don't trust anyone under 30?") we deserve what we get. If a large number of us don't behave like gracefully aging older adults, I guess the rest of us won't be treated as such.
Someone in the online forum asked me why it mattered that Laundry Room goon didn't "get" that I didn't like him? A good question. It isn't that I don't like
him really, it's that I don't like the whole hipandcool boomer "gestalt" that he keeps shoving at me trying to make common cause. An analogy would be if someone Italian-American found out that I was Italian-American and kept shoving Andrea Bocelli at me or kept throwing the odd bit of Italian slang into the conversation thinking it was a "bond" no matter how many times I said I didn't like Bocelli and was not a "paisan" (apologies to my Italian American friends, I'm just using this as an example). For example, I remember the first time I yelled at him for playing what I later found out was "the Velvet Underground" at an ear splitting volume he asked me with genuine surprise "You don't like the Velvet Underground?" Then I said I mostly listened to classical music, but
did like certain popular music like the music from Motown in the 60s. So he said "so when you hear that you start grooving to the beat, huh?" which made me reflexively want to run to the loo and barf.
Someone on the online discussion board made a nasty comment to me about "pearl clutching". That is supposed to be a pejorative, I know, but it conjured up a rather nice image. Yes, I'm going to be 70 so why not? I like the image of myself in a tasteful dress with a string of pearls. I've earned the right to be offered a seat and be shielded from the worst of the bad language young people use. I'd rather be a "pearl clutcher" than someone making a fool of himself thinking he's cool (and yes, the people who do this are mostly male; aging female hippies are mostly quiet and sweet, with an interesting fashion sense).
Now I should say that this man is in no way "the norm". I have a large circle of friends (mostly women and gay men, and a few married couples) who are my age and none of them blast loud music from the 70s (or from anywhere) and very few of them pepper every sentence with profanity. We go to chamber music concerts, have book discussion groups (mostly about Barbara Pym or Jane Austen) and go to museums. But we are not stick in the muds. More than half of my friends went to the women's marches wearing "pussy hats" and some even travel to El Salvador or go to the border to help immigrants.
