An Invisible Line

The other day a friend of mine told me that on a flight from New York to Hong Kong, about ten years ago, he had the good fortune to be seated next to an enchanting young woman from Hong Kong. Towards the end of their flight, he told her he'd be spending some time in her city and asked if he might call her. "Pete," she said, "you're an attractive elderly gentleman, but you're still an elderly gentleman." My friend, who was in his early sixties at the time, knew then, he told me, that he had crossed a line.

At about the same time, my sister and her husband became lost while hiking in an Hawaiian forest with friends, with whom they had become separated. Eventually they reoriented themselves and found their way back, only to learn that their friends had reported them lost and that a missing persons alert had been broadcast describing them as an "elderly couple." Like my friend, they were in their sixties, and like my friend, they were surprised to be viewed as elderly, to have crossed that line.

When are we viewed as elderly? For most of us, I think, it's during our sixties. Long ago cashiers stopped asking for proof that I'm entitled to a senior discount. Nowadays, in a context like that, when age is salient, I'm not surprised to be viewed as old. But even now I'm sometimes startled when young people, both male and female, offer me their seat on buses and subways. When I board a subway car or bus I'm not thinking of myself as old. I'm not thinking of myself as any particular age, until a young person's kind gesture reminds me that yes, I'm an old man. It's a sensation akin to coming across my reflection unexpectedly. "Who's that old man?" I ask myself, only to realize a split second later that it's me.

In Jenny Joseph's poem, "Warning - When I'm an Old Woman I shall Wear Purple," the poet claims that when she's old she's going to make up for the carefulness of her youth. When she's old, she's going to spend her pension "on brandy and summer gloves / and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter." She'll sit on the pavement if she feels like it and engage in all sorts of other outrageous behaviors. But I'll bet that she doesn't fulfill her vow. Like the rest of us, she'll probably continue to go about her business unconscious of her age, until momentarily reminded by the young that she is old.

Elaine Yaffe, in the first of her August posts (www.botholderandwiser.blogspot.com), writes about crossing not one line but several as she's gone from youth to matron to a person no longer strong enough to sit in a seat next to an aircraft emergency exit. Having crossed each of these lines was a surprise to her, just as my sister and her husband and my friend on the plane to Hong Kong were surprised to be seen as elderly. These lines are invisible, as Elaine says, but when we cross them they're invisible only to us.