A Little Old Lady

Among the unglamorous tasks involved in the renovation of our apartment was the choice of toilets. In pursuit of this goal, my wife recently set out to visit the distributor of the toilets she was considering. Their showroom was at 5 Mercer Street, in Soho. When she arrived at Mercer Street, a personable and most presentable young man stopped her and told her she couldn’t enter. “But I need to go to number 5 and I believe it’s on this block.” “Yes,” he told her, “it’s at the end of the block and that’s where we’re making a movie. But I’ll call my colleague there and tell him that you’re coming, and when there’s a break in the filming, he’ll let you through.”

The young man picked up his walkie-talkie, established connection with his colleague, and said “I’m sending a little old lady through.”

“I may be old and I may be little,” my wife told the young man, “but I don’t like to be called ‘a little old lady.’ That’s not a nice way to talk.” The young man looked abashed, but my wife didn’t give him a chance to say anything. In a hurry as usual, she stalked off. When she arrived at the end of the block, she told the young man’s counterpart there, “Your colleague was not very nice to me. He made me feel bad when he called me ‘a little old lady.’” Said the counterpart, “I hope you gave him what for.” Indeed she had. She might be little (4’11”) and old (74), but she’s’ not to be underestimated.

Unfeelingly, I laughed when she told me about the encounter. “But you are a little, old lady,” I said. “Yes,” she said, “but it’s such a cliché. It’s like saying that I’m harmless, a nonentity, a person of no consequence.” It’s true. It is a cliché. We’ve all heard of the used car advertisement asserting that a car was formerly owned by a little old lady. The cultural assumption here is that a little old lady would be likely to drive slowly and not very far. This may be true of some old ladies but not of my wife, an excellent driver. Fifteen years ago, she drove all over South Africa, New Zealand, much of coastal Australia, and only last weekend she drove up to Kingston at five or ten mph above the speed limit, while her elderly husband mainly looked out the window or snoozed. She loves to drive.

When I put myself in my wife’s place on Mercer Street, I understood how she felt. If the young man had referred to me as “an old man” or even as “an old gentleman,” I wouldn’t have liked it. First of all, it’s irrelevant. More important, the cultural view of old men, not counting the few who have continued as titans of finance, commerce, or politics, is that they’re used up, useless, good for nothing more than playing golf or sitting on a park bench and watching the world go by. This attitude seems particularly prevalent among the young, to whom the old often seem invisible.

Of course, many old people aren’t up to much and don’t do much, but many others are still vibrant and active, like my wife. As in so many other matters, I’m doing my best to follow her example.