An unexpected, but rather funny comment from an 11-year-old boy recently got me to thinking about how children view the older members of the community and whether they actually think about growing old. I was spending time with a family while at work and during the course of a game the mother, in her late 30’s, said she had to rest as she was getting tired. Her son instantly replied – that’s because you’re old”! Well of course at age 68 I consider the 30’s to be anything but old, so I asked what did that make me. The reply came back very quickly – ‘a fossil”! Well I burst out laughing at his response as how could I be offended by his honesty?
Not long after I remembered that ‘fossil’ had been the nickname given to my father by the teenagers in the classes he taught in his early 70’s – the word retirement wasn’t in his vocabulary – and here I was four years away from that age, being called the same thing! And I’m not retiring either!
