The O Word

I laughed when I read this on page 127 of Nora Ephron's book I Remember Nothing:

I'm old.

I am sixty-nine years old.

I'm not really old, of course.

Really old is eighty.

Why did that make me laugh?  Because I was in my eighties when I read it recently.  Today is my 83rd birthday, an age that is apparently older than old.  I googled "older than old" and found out a few things:

• "What is a fancy word for old?  senior, geriatric, senescent, unyoung, over-the-hill."
• "Forms of ageism in language:  old fogey, old man/old woman, geezer, dinosaur."
• "A person between 60 and 69 is called a sexagenarian.  A person between 70 and 79 is called a septuagenarian.  A person between 80 and 89 is called an octogenarian.  A person between 90 and 99 is called a nonagenarian.

Any way you look at it, I'm old.  More and more people are living into old age.  I look back and see that my maternal grandmother died at 62.  My youngest child is nearing that age, and my other two have already reached it.  Thanks to medical science, folks are living longer.  By the way, Nora Ephron's chapter is entitled is "The O Word."  Old age.

Here is a photo of me in my early twenties, with my three children and my husband.  It was taken about 1964, when my son was about a year old and I was 24.  I wasn't old yet.