A couple of months ago I mentioned to a young man – who is in his late teens – that my 87-year-old mother has a Facebook account. His response startled me. It was something like “That’s just sick.”

This is how I interpreted his response: “I can’t believe I would enjoy anything an old person would enjoy. Facebook is for the young, so an old person on Facebook is just not age-appropriate.”

Misconceptions. I extrapolated that reaction into attitudes a lot of us may unwittingly hold, no matter how many years we have lived. As I consider the aging process and observe those who are decades older than me, I am becoming more aware of misconceptions about those we would call elderly.

Photo by Michael Melrose

The misconceptions can begin with this phrase:

“Once you’re over the age of _____”:    [Fill in the blank with your age plus 20.]

1. You’re so set in your ways you couldn’t change if you wanted to.
2. You have no needs beyond being fed and out of pain.
3. You’re content to sit in a room by yourself in an assisted living or nursing facility with occasional social interaction with those of your own age.
4. The desire to have fun and to enjoy new experiences is important only for those younger than you are.
5. Your history doesn’t matter. What’s past is past.
6. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be my age. Haven’t you always been old?
7. You don’t mind being dependent on others. After all, you’re old. What do you expect?
8. You’re too old to care about your appearance. Your wrinkles and sagging skin shouldn’t worry you; you can’t expect to be attractive anymore.
9. You don’t mind if I talk about you in the third person while you’re present.
10. You should keep any strong opinions to yourself. They’re sure to be outdated.

I trust none of us would express these misconceptions out loud, but as I move closer to the front of this queue we call our lifespan, I realize how many times I have misjudged, misspoken, and behaved badly toward those whom I would consider elderly.

What I Learned from Abbie Deal. This realization smacked me between the eyes a couple of months ago through the fictional character, Abbie Deal, heroine of A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich. A Nebraska pioneer, she made countless sacrifices for the benefit of her family, resulting in their financial and professional success. Toward the end of her life, though her children loved her, they tended to patronize her and disregard her wisdom. Once, when she began to talk of something that had no connection to their conversation, they decided she was losing touch with reality. In reality, she was standing apart from them, viewing the whole picture, while they could see only the parts.

I can’t expect my young friend, with a remembered history of about 16 years, to identify with an 87-year-old woman who survived the Great Depression and the dust bowl years, with the experiences of her own generation as well as those of three generations to follow.

That’s why the more mature may not need me to defend them. They probably possess enough grace to excuse our misconceptions. They probably have enough experience to understand our misunderstandings. After all, they were our age once.

Talk to me. Am I wrong about what I perceive to be misconceptions? Do you have observations to add?

We would not dream of kidding someone about looking Hispanic, because that would not only be insensitive but would indicate we think there’s something wrong with having dark eyes, dark hair and bronze skin.

We would not kid someone about looking obese or walking like they had multiple sclerosis, because obesity has negative connotations, and we recognize multiple sclerosis as a debilitating and incurable disease.

Yet we think it’s funny to laugh about getting old. If it’s okay to be old, why laugh about it? If it’s not okay, then should it be funny?

Lesson Learned the Hard Way

About six weeks ago we were in Middletown, Ohio, for a wedding, staying at the Manchester Inn, where the wedding would take place. That same weekend about three university track teams, in town for an area-wide track meet, shared the hotel with us. Oh, the muscular energy that abounded in that place that weekend! As we would walk down the three flights of stairs to the ground floor, they would be bounding up with their luggage.

After the wedding Friday night, upon a return from a short walk, I opted to take the stairs up to our room, but my husband chose the elevator, which was just across the passageway. A couple of young men were also waiting for the elevator, and one of them opened the door for me as I entered the stairwell. As I climbed the stairs, other athletes were coming down. I reached our room ahead of my husband. Soon I could hear him approaching amid gales of laughter. When he got in, he could hardly contain himself.

Apparently, when the “stairs” athletes saw the “elevator” athletes waiting for their ride up, they joked, “Are you so weak you have to take the elevator? Why, we just saw this like 80-year-old woman taking the stairs!”

How we laughed and laughed about that, in just about every state on the way home. We told it in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and back home in Nebraska – every opportunity we could. Sure enough, we got great laughs. My favorite part would be when my husband got to the punch line and the hearer would look at me, and say, “You? You don’t look 80!”

Funny story – until I told it to Abe, an ageless gentleman in Mississippi – a man who loves telling and hearing good jokes. My husband wasn’t there, so I thought I’d amuse Abe with the stairs story. It may have been the way I told it, but Abe didn’t seem amused.

And then it dawned on me. If I had heard the story from someone who was 40, kidding that she was taken for 60, my reaction would have been: “So what’s wrong with looking 60?”

If and when my husband tells the story again, I’ll still enjoy listening to it – because of course, it’s about me! But I won’t laugh with quite as much gusto.

Talk to me: What do you think? Am I being oversensitive about this? Have you had a similar experience?