I See Old People...

They don't know they are old...

I'm thinking of two categories of old people, one of young people (younger than me, that is) who think and behave as if they were 65, and the other - old people who somehow manage to live as if age didn't matter.

Like this one.

Or this one.

My best bet. She wears the same dress as my late grandmother. Her name was Sultana, by the way, I am named after her. Roughly:D

A few months ago, I had a memorable conversation with a friend's friend in my kitchen (yeah, all memorable conversations take place there;). He's ten years younger than me but all his troubling experiences somehow aged him, deprived him of pleasure, health, optimism. To me he looked unusually wise for his age, but his limpness almost repelled me, and I am hard to repel. He told me that inside I was much younger than him, which struck me as preposterous. I'm living like an old age pensioner, after all. Stay at home all the time, groan when I do the housework, think of death more often than the average person. What made him say that? What is the quality of life or personality that makes us look (and feel) a certain age?

I think we let our lives be ruled by stereotypes, especially in terms of age. By the age of __ I will do___. This makes us feel normal. Normal teenagers do certain things, normal middle-age people other things. That's ok, we need a point of reference when thinking about others, but I am interested in the extent to which our perception of ourselves is influenced by the number of candles on the cake. Maybe if we think of ourselves as immortal souls, sheltered in a mortal body, our horror of aging will subside? Maybe not. I still shudder at the memory of a scene in the book Thornbirds by Colleen McCullough, when the old bitch wanted to kiss the young priest, and he pulled away, she told him something in the lines of: 'Inside this ugly old body I'm still young'... Sometimes stereotypes _are_ the right attitude.

There's an old lady living in my building. She gives me the creeps because I'll be like her, when I grow old. She is about 65-70, looks nice, walks slowly, sometimes smells of alcohol. She looks sophisticated, intelligent, and very lonely. I am almost sure that her dreamy look is not because she's drunk. She's simply... on a ride.

AC/DC - Ride On

It's another lonely evenin',
In another lonely town
But I ain't too young to worry,
Nah I ain't too old to cry,
When a woman gets me down
Got another empty bottle,
Mmmm n' another empty bed
Ain't too young to admit it,
Nah I'm not too old to lie,
I'm just another empty head
Mmmm that's why I'm lonely... I'm so lonely
But I know what I'm gonna do-

[Chorus]
I'm gonna ride on, ride on...
(Ride on) Standin' on the edge of the road...
(Ride on) Thumb in the air...
(Ride on) One of these days...
(Ride on) I'm gonna change my evil ways, huh...
Till then, I'll just keep - ridin' on...

[Solo]

Broke another promise,
N' I broke another heart
But I ain't too young to realize,
That I ain't too old to try,
Try to get back to the start
And it's another red light nightmare,
On another red light street
And I ain't too old to hurry,
'Cause I ain't too old to die,
But I sure am hard to beat
But I'm lonely... Lord, I'm lonely...
What am I gonna do?

[Chorus]
(Ride on, ride on)
Got myself a one-way ticket...
(Ride on, ride on)
Goin' the wrong way...
(Ride on) Gonna change my evil ways...
(Ride on) One of the days...
One of these days...

The obligatory cheesy lyrics on the topic of the correlation between young and old:D
I had this album on a RECORD, btw, not cassette tape. God, I am not old, I'm ANCIENT:P