Detesting Old Age

I have detested old age from my infancy, Mark Twain remarked, towards the end of October 1895, and anything that removes from me even for a few moments the consciousness that I am old is gratifying to me. He was addressing a society of journalists in Melbourne at the end of an evening in which they had gathered to honor him. It was, he said, a peculiarly pleasant evening - a darling evening of my life, because during the two or three hours he had spent with them, he felt young again. In the next month, he continued, he would turn 60, but during that evening, in their company, he felt "rejuvenated."

Mark Twain cannot be trusted when he talked about himself in public, since he sometimes employed exaggeration and invention to flatter an audience or to achieve other effects. He may not have always detested old age. But in Melbourne, beset by persistent boils and financial worries, he was probably sincere when he referred to himself as old. His contemporaries, at any rate, agreed with him. He was in Melbourne at the time, because that city was one of the many stops on his year-long "lecture tour" of the English-speaking world. His "lectures" were in fact performances that appeared to be extemporaneous talks but were in fact meticulously rehearsed. Many newspaper reviews of his performances, often mentioning his gray locks, would refer to him as an old man.

Today, people in their sixties resist calling themselves old, not only because life expectancies are longer, but also because they want to appear younger. Our fetishizing of youth leads many older people to resort to plastic surgery, hair coloring, and "rejuvenating" creams in order to appear more youthful. If plastic surgery has not removed their wattles and double chins, they sometimes wear turtleneck shirts and sweaters to minimize or conceal them. The desire to remain healthy is only one motivation for their dietary and exercising regimes; they also want to retain (or regain) their youthful figures. It's not only women who try to look younger. Some aging male politicians have hair that is implausibly black, and plastic surgeons report many men among their clients.

In an e-mail to a friend, I wrote that recently I had entered my 80th year. Assuming that I had turned 80, he congratulated me for having passed that landmark. When I explained that I was only 79, and that turning 79 marked the end of my 79th year and the beginning of my 80th, he wrote back asking me why I wanted to seem older than I am.

Eighty does seem a lot older than 79, just as $10.00 seems a lot more than $9.99, although the difference is minimal. But "80th year" sounds so much more impressive than 79, and that's why I referred to myself that way. Far from detesting old age, I'm unreasonably pleased with myself for having reached such an august stage of development. I don't mind appearing old, and I enjoy the deference that it occasionally inspires.

Anyway, it's just as well that I don't mind looking old. There's no point to coloring my hair, since I'm almost bald. A wig would make me look like a superannuated Harpo Marx, and besides it would probably itch. Plastic surgery to remove my facial wrinkles, wattles, spots, and other less mentionable marks of age, besides being ridiculous, would take too much time and money, and besides it would hurt. I'm happy to be old, and I hope to become even older.