January 2024
By Richard Fleming
Photo courtesy of Nigel Tadyanehondo
Many of us seniors don’t feel as ancient as our birth certificates proclaim. For those who have so far avoided devastating health problems, we typically collect aging’s components slowly. The ailments sneak up on us. Minor joint aches accumulate. The aging of our skin and hair unfolds over years. Stamina dissipates almost imperceptibly. Our trouble recalling names is easy to dismiss, because those people’s names weren’t all that important, right?
And because our physical and mental capacities erode gradually, we can be fooled for a while. But at some point reality intervenes. The mirage fades as the maladies amass. And society puts a stamp on it by highlighting how differently we approach life than everyone else.
What activities mark us as unequivocally old? What features set us apart from the younger generations? I will mention several that I experience, but there are many others. Your results may vary. (Please feel free to add more in the comments section.)
- I do not go out in public wearing pants that are torn and ripped. I would find that embarrassing. While I may sometimes wear articles of clothing that have a hole or two, it’s only because I didn’t realize the holes were there. Young folks wear ripped clothing as a styling statement.
- I often write checks when I need to pay for something. My parents taught me how to write checks carefully and accurately. Knowing there is a clean paper trail for where our cash is going provides a sense of security. Today, though, it seems many young people do not own a checkbook and don’t know what they could possibly be used for.
- I am not very good or efficient with those new-fangled payment methods the rest of society seems to use, like Venmo and ApplePay. I find it intriguing that a person can twist their wrist over the payment terminal at the grocery store and then push their cart out the door. They pay without reaching for their credit card. I’ve just recently learned how to tap my credit card on payment terminals, but paying from my watch is a bridge too far.
- I usually communicate using email. Email still amazes me. It is so quick, so efficient, so useful. But when I email my kids, I rarely hear back from them. If I text, they respond quickly. They tell me no one uses email anymore. Young people appear to view email as a dinosaur, akin to snail mail or corded land line phones. (My wife and I still have those phones.)
- When a person I’m calling does not answer their phone, I tend to leave a voicemail message. Most seniors are very comfortable using voicemail. Answering machines became common household devices when we were growing up, so we became very familiar with this technology (though we didn’t call it voicemail). For some reason, younger generations dislike voicemail and often won’t even listen to it. If I get no response to a voicemail I left a few days earlier, I can safely assume the recipient is under age 50.
- Over the past ten years, I’ve learned to embrace the utility of texting. But I use my dominant hand’s index finger to type one letter at a time. I’m still mystified how young people can type using two thumbs. How can a person enter words correctly that way? When we were growing up, the phrase “I’m all thumbs” meant I was awkward and clumsy. Today, I suppose this phrase refers to a person who can text quickly.
- When I text, I write words in complete sentences. I might text “Are you coming over later?”, while young folks will text “r u coming l8r”. And I always put punctuation marks at the end of sentences. (I still remember the lessons from Mr. McKinney’s 9th grade grammar class at Roosevelt Junior High.) But many young people seem to feel punctuation is superfluous. In their view, putting a period at the end of a sentence conveys hostility or passive-aggressiveness.
- I don’t participate in what seems to be called… um… chat groups. Did I get that term right? Cognitively, I find it hard enough to keep individual text communications organized. If I had to keep track of what group chat each text belonged to, my mind would implode.
- I still watch cable television. I have listened to young people try to explain to me that cable is outdated. Evidently you can now plug a thumb drive into the back of your TV and watch whatever you want. No thanks. When I want to watch television, I prefer to sit down and relax. I don’t want to be challenged to remember which buttons to push and which menus to navigate through to be able to watch NBC News or Survivor. With cable, it is easy. You turn on the TV and enter the channel number. Done and done.
I’ve barely scratched the surface on the list of traits which mark me as undeniably, fully, and wholly old. I don’t understand most modern slang. I’ve never heard of most of the hosts on Saturday Night Live. I don’t know the musical groups topping the charts on Spotify. I don’t follow any influencers and don’t understand how they are any different from advertisers. I don’t get my news from Facebook or the Gram. I could go on, but…
Mind you, my aim here is not to complain. And I certainly do not mean to disrespect young people. Rather, I just want to acknowledge how gob smacked I sometimes feel about how far today’s younger generations have evolved beyond the Boomers and the Silents. In my younger years, I used to pride myself on being in touch with culture, trends, and social norms. Nowadays I often just feel lost in time and space.
This phenomenon is not unique to the 21st Century. Generation gaps are timeless. When Boomers were young, we knew it all. And we lamented the fact our elders were stodgy, rigid, and didn’t understand music, lifestyle, politics, and culture. Now we have grown old and can no longer avoid the reality that we too are aging out of many currents of modern life.
But we should not see the novel habits of younger folks as problematic. Indeed, it is reassuring to see the vitality and innovation of the younger generations. They have taken the baton and are now the ones shaping today’s world. I hope beyond hope they succeed in creating a society with fewer problems than the world they are inheriting from us.
* * *
If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to be notified of future posts. Subscriptions are free.
My wife and I can no longer set foot in Williamsburg. No one is over 35. The music in restaurants is so loud we need to turn off our hearing aids; but then we can’t communicate with each other. Or the server. (Waitress?Waiter?Waitever?)
And then there’s the sudden affinity for crooners and their music.
Does anyone remember Andy Rooney?
I certainly remember Andy. Those eyebrows!! LOL
Every time I read one of your essays, it makes me smile, grimace, or just acknowledge that I’m right there at the same place in life as you. I just had my birthday last week, so am now officially in the middle of this decade. At least, I’m still here, upright, and still able to balance my checkbook whenever I want.
Speaking of checks, I asked a bank employee for some check registers to track my debits (checks not so much), and he didn’t know what I was talking about. It’s obvious, isn’t it, that we’re still intelligent and can communicate coherently, but in a different language.
Yes, I still use complete sentences and haven’t given up using punctuation. Poor Mr. McKinney is probably not resting easy if he knows anything about texting methods. All hail Mr. McKinney!
As always you really hit the nail on the head with this one! Or is that idiom still in use in this modern era?!
There is SO much to reply to in your post this month, so here goes:
• Agree, nope to purposely ripped clothing
• Nope to writing ANY checks—pay anything possible by credit card (to get miles points to visit Seattle kids and grandkids!) And to help save the environment (and stamps!). And it is immediate.
• Love VENMO—you should try it (although I am terrified someone is going to get my phone and drain it of info stored there…)
• Still love EMAIL, but similarly, my adult kids don’t
• My kids HATE VMM—maybe b/c their dad (literally) leaves 2 minute long messages!
• LOVE texting—so convenient and I’m a two thumb texter so fast for me. If only my husband would use…
• Mr. McKinney—easily the most important/best teacher I had in my 19 years of formal education. When people invariably ask you to identify the teacher you liked the most, my answer is always “Mr. McKinney.” Don’t remember him as warm and cuddly—just as the teacher who made me diagram sentences at the board and taught me how to write. I owe him a lot.
• Chat groups? Am in a couple and I will admit they can get unwieldly. One is a group of 8 THS women, and one is a group from my Schol Hall at KU, and I just don’t want to miss anything in any of their lives so stay tethered.
• Cable. Yes, but boy oh boy am I ready to jump to YouTube TV—which all of my kids use. Just don’t want to have to learn all those new channel codes, etc. And I finally canceled my land line after the last of our elderly parents died. YOU can do it… Saved almost $500 a year—isn’t that ridiculous!
• Who ARE all these “famous” people in People Magazine. Can’t keep up
Wonderful post–thanks. JMK
Richard, you hit the nail on the head with this one. (Oops, I see someone else already said this! So it must be true LOL) I can SOoooo identify and agree with all your examples here… the money transactions thing, texting and other communication methods, punctuation and grammar/spelling… yes, I do sometimes feel lost in a lost world. But I also sometimes feel sorry for those younger kids who have no knowledge of, or desire to have knowledge of, many of the things I’ve experienced and have knowledge of. They’re missing out. I suppose just like our generation missed out on our parents’ and grandparents’ “good old days.” *sigh*
Same. Plus I still carry around a small amount of cash, for use at small local businesses (like my favorite coffee shop) where I figure the owners would appreciate not having to pay the 3% (or whatever) credit card fee. I presume there will be a day in the not-too-distant future when the cashiers (are they called that any more?) doesn’t know what to do with those green pieces of paper I give them.
I know my first name, and presumably my yahoo email address, also scream OLD PERSON.
Nice one Richard!
I sometimes sign my name at the end of a text, which I’m told is a sure sign that I’m old.
Like this,
Brett 🙂
Most of what you wrote is very true for us, although we finally got rid of our landline. The main way that I feel old is when younger people (50 year olds) assume I can’t do something because I’m “frail.” Ugh!
Thank you for your wonderful articles, or are they called blogs nowadays? 😂
Despite being old (I’ll hit 80 in August), I have stopped signing most emails & messages. So I guess I’m not *that* old 🙂
I am older than you and I would hate to tell you how many people in retail think it is funny that I know how to pay with my watch! The bank has encouraged me to continue doing this because it is impossible to hack my account.
I fell yesterday and my watch wanted to call 911 and get me help. I was able to cancel that! It is amazing when it tells me I had a hard fall. How does it know that! I haven’t broken the watch Lense, if that is what they call the clear glass covering anymore!
My grandson only talks to me via texts which can run on for several days! I still use capitalization and punctuation. I think he can read cursive but not all young people can now.
Thank you for your article. I really enjoy them and they do make me laugh, which I don’t think we do often enough!
Very well said, as usual. My son taught me the twisty-wrist (Apple watch) method of payment at Thanksgiving, and I’ve been trying it but it (as someone else noted) often results in a resigned sign and me pulling out my credit card.
How about top sheets? My kids and grandkids find them superfluous. Paper napkins vs. paper towels? Sending a birthday card instead of a e-card?
Bruce Feiler has a great essay on this topic. I won’t give you a link . I know you can google it!