Hey, all I'm saying is that I don't think it's unreasonable to classify someone as "old" if they are eligible for the senior discount.
To my surprise, I'm eligible for the seniors' discount at various pharmacies. I'll be 57 in June. There's a property management company in town that gives a break in the damage deposit for tenants who are 50 and over.
If you think I'm going to get huffy and insulted (the way many women do if anyone dares to even
hint that they're older than 40) when someone's offering me a 20% discount off my purchases, think again.
One of the things I learned about age from living with my grandparents for so many years is that it's pointless to get huffy and insulted about passing certain age-related social 'milestones.' It's going to happen no matter what, and complaining won't help. If you want fewer birthdays, move to Mars or Ceres. Your body won't care, but at least the calendar will give you lower numbers.
And elderly people are not some creepy alien species (so often during my school years, the reaction of kids to learning that I lived with my grandparents was "Ewww, isn't that
weird?").
Over 20 years ago I belonged to a science fiction club at the local college. I was long over my own regular student days at that time, but a friend and I (she was a generation older) decided to audit some classes, just for fun and getting out of our respective houses. So that's how I finally ended up being able to take astronomy, classical and medieval history, one of the cultural geography courses that hadn't been offered earlier, and linguistic anthropology. The instructors didn't mind having 'mature students' in their classes, as there were times during the discussions that we had perspectives the younger students didn't. And we got to choose whether or not we wanted to do the assignments and exams (we weren't required to do them, and if we did, the instructors weren't required to mark them; I did the assignments in some classes but not in others).
One of the other reasons for doing this was social. We got together with some fellow science fiction fans and decided to form a club. That resulted in some fun times of gaming, parties, and other get-togethers. And one night at a meeting, my friend and I had to laugh. One of the women there was glum because it was her birthday soon, and she was complaining that she was getting
OLD!!!.
We asked her how old, and she whined, "I'm turning 30."
I told her, "I turned 30 years ago. It's not fatal." My friend, who was well over 50, just sat in her chair, giggling.
