"Maybe it is time you started acting your age"

                   "Maybe it is time you started acting your age"

     Jay's doctor "half jokingly" told him that as he treated the onset of sciatica. Jay has barely passed the age to receive Social Security benefits if he chose to do so. Telling someone to 'act their age' or to speak of 'age appropriate behavior' constitute forms of Ageism: "discrimination where people are mistreated based on their age." (An online definition).  For me, it echoes 'how old is old ?' and if you have seen one old person, you have seen ONE OLD person'. While there seems to be no 'cure' for getting older ('beats the alternative' is the usual quip), stereotyping and condescending words and actions based on age are insulting.  

    'Time to start acting your age' or 'what do you expect at your age ' might mean that it is time to get a new doctor or a new fill in the blank  who shows respect despite the number of birthdays one has celebrated.  

   Yep, I have had 86 birthdays and so has my Orthopedist and we each have skills and abilities that have diminished with years.  Yet, we each continue to practice our professions with a high level of competency.  The same is true for many older persons. Skills that are used tend to remain sharp.

    In her book This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, Ashton Applewhite wrote of  Global Wrinkling and its many implications. There is an unacknowledged anxiety abroad about getting older that finds 'scapegoats' in order to lessen the reality of one's own eventual mortality.  Bravado, bluster and botox do not long hide the reality of passing time.In an earlier post, I wrote that "old age is not a definite  biological stage. The chronological age designated as old varies culturally and historically."

   Getting older does not mean ageism is acceptable.

          Satchel