“How many old people does it take to change a light bulb?”
“Change?!!!!!!”
Growing older is often associated with an unwillingness to change.
Sadly, it’s often true. You may have heard phrases like “I’m too old to think about that” or “I’m too set in my ways to change now.”
From the womb to the tomb and beyond, our physical bodies constantly undergo change. Read more…
When my children lived at home, they heard that often from me.
I would use the phrase when they would complain about having to do something that was a result of a choice they had made.
They didn’t want to do homework after soccer practice because they were too tired? Well, “life is full of choices. You may not have a choice about the homework, but you had a choice about the soccer.”
Too tired on Saturday morning to help with the housework because they stayed up watching a late movie on TV? “Well, that was your choice, and you have to live with the consequences.”
They heard the phrase from their mean ol’ Mama so often, it became an acronym: L-I-F-O-C. Read more…
This is NOT Mrs. Miller.
What do you think when someone speaks of being “90 years young”?
I’ve always heard that expression as a cute substitute for “old.” Since the expression rarely refers to someone younger than 50, it’s at once an admission of age and a determination not to be categorized.
On NPR’s August 9th Weekend Edition, in a story entitled “Remember: The Ball is Your Friend,” essayist and “literary activist” E. Ethelbert Miller tells about his 59-year-old wife’s decision to play basketball for the first time in her life. In passing, he mentions that the “challenge” he and his wife face is “being 60-young instead of 60-old.”
So I’m not the only one! Read more…
