SIGNS OF OLD AGE
Old age is usually associated with declining faculties, both mental and physical, and a reduction in social commitments (including sport participation). The precise onset of old age varies culturally and historically. It is a social construct, rather than a biological stage. Certain physical signs marked an individual as old: tooth-less ness, balding or gray hair, hunched back, lameness, deafness. Increasing debility was the clearest signal that one was becoming old.
Chronological markers of old age were recognized as well, and these grew increasingly important and consistent. The age of sixty was widely associated with the onset of old age, but several other ages—especially fifty, sixty-three, and seventy—were also used as thresholds of old age.
Are you really old? What is the age when one becomes old? These are a few questions that arise in ones mind as he/she nears 60 and thereafter.
A simple method to diagnose it is called A.A.A.D.D. - Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.
This is how it manifests:
You decide to water the garden. As you turn on the hose in the driveway, you see your car and decide it needs washing. As you start toward the garage, you notice mail on the porch table that you had picked up from the mail box earlier.
You decide to go through the mail before you wash the car.
You kept the car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.
So, you decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.
But then you think, since you are going to be near the mailbox when you take out the garbage anyway, you may as well pay the bills first.
You take out your check book and see that there is only 1 check left. The extra checks are in the desk in the study, so you go inside the house to the desk where you find the can of Coke you had been drinking.
The flower pot on the table catches your eye -they need water. You put the Coke on the table and discover that the reading glasses that you have been searching for since morning were also lying on the table. You decide that it would be better to put them back on your desk, but first you must water the flowers. You leave the glasses back down on the table, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote which was misplaced since last night.
Someone had left it on the kitchen table. You realise that tonight when you go to watch TV, you will be again searching for the remote, and would not remember that it was on the kitchen table, so you decide to put it back on the TV cabinet, where it belongs, but first you decide to water the flowers. You pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the
floor. So, you decide to place the remote back on the table, get a mop and wipe up the spill. Then, you head down the hall trying to remember what you were planning to do.
At the end of the day:
- the car is not washed
- the bills are not paid
- there is a warm can of Coke lying on the table
- The flowers do not have enough water,
- there is still only 1 check in your check book,
- you can not find the remote,
- you ca not find your glasses,
- and you do not remember what you did with the car keys.
Then, when you try to figure out why nothing got done?
You go back looking for your checks, but first you need to push the Coke aside so that you do not accidentally knock it over. The Coke is getting warm, and you decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As you head toward the kitchen with the Coke, you notice a vase of flowers on the table needing watering.
You do not understand what happened, because now you are really tired because it was a busy day with you doing all the jobs.
You realise this is a serious problem, and you try to get some help for it, but first you decide to check the e-mail. There you are at it all over again!
Don't laugh -- if this is not you yet, your day is coming!!
GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY.
GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL.
LAUGHING AT YOURSELF IS THERAPEUTIC.
