You know you are getting old when:

[GHT]

When you learn that Connie Nielsen, the Danish actress who starred as Lucilla in the film Gladiator, is 60 next birthday, you are getting old.

When are you going to start looking old Connie?

 

[So33]

I turned 64 today. I had to sing along to Song by Beatles “When I’m 64”

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
The oft-told story is that Paul McCartney, always one with an ear for a catchy melody, came up with that tune at age 14.

I hesitate to call anything “timeless,” but McCartney’s songs, many of them, transcend the rock ‘n’ roll era. He has a tremendous gift, and we’re fortunate to have him. Yet he can’t read musical notation.

 

[tonyb]

When you learn that Connie Nielsen, the Danish actress who starred as Lucilla in the film Gladiator, is 60 next birthday, you are getting old.
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When are you going to start looking old Connie?

You know you ain’t a kid anymore when many a 60-year-old woman catches your eye, and not just the sirens of the silver screen, either.

I was left numb, speechless, absolutely unmoored, by the news that an old girlfriend had died at age 71. We hadn’t been involved with each other for nearly a couple decades at that point, but we always knew the other would be picking up the phone should occasion call for it. The last I saw her, a few years prior, she still looked pretty darned yummy to me.

 

[Tiki Tom]

You know you ain’t a kid anymore when many a 60-year-old woman catches your eye, and not just the sirens of the silver screen, either.

I was left numb, speechless, absolutely unmoored, by the news that an old girlfriend had died at age 71. We hadn’t been involved with each other for nearly a couple decades at that point, but we always knew the other would be picking up the phone should occasion call for it. The last I saw her, a few years prior, she still looked pretty darned yummy to me.

Sadly, too true. On the one hand, getting old is, shall we say, not bad because the old male sex drive has calmed down quite a bit. Life is more peaceful that way. On the other hand, it never dies away completely. And —fortunately or unfortunately— it almost seems that the shoe is on the other foot these days. Sheesh.

I also had an ex crush pass away this year. I learned that she eventually got married and had a child. Then they quickly got divorced and she was more or less alone for the rest of her life. She was probably just 70 when she passed.

Life is short.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^^
I believe it was on the occasion of one of his later birthdays when Gore Vidal observed that among the benefits of advancing age was freedom from what he called “the tyranny of the male libido.”

I wish the Gore Vidal of 40 or 50 years ago, when he was at the height of his powers (by my lights) was around to offer his take on the affairs of the day. He was courageous (“out” when so being might well have been social and/or career suicide), honest about such matters when few were (or are even today, really, no matter how “true to their own selves” they may wish to believe they are), and a brilliant prose stylist. I reread his old essays from time to time, to remind myself just how good he was.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

You know you ain’t a kid anymore when many a 60-year-old woman catches your eye, and not just the sirens of the silver screen, either.

Thirty or so yrs ago I had a business relationship & friendship with the owner of a company/sub contractor who was in his 70’s. He had made a lot of money, didn’t want to retire so he bought an oceanfront condo at Boca Raton, FL. All the condos were owned by older wealthy snowbirds. Every winter he would spend 6-8 wks there. He enjoyed the gym, playing golf, & the clubhouse. He would talk about a neighborhood widow in his golf foursome & how she was a fox! I just remember thinking to myself, but she’s 78 yrs old!

 

[tonyb]

The degree to which people disregard the role of biology — you know, the birds and the bees — in all this can leave me gobsmacked. It’s as if they missed that day in health class when they went over human reproduction. It’s as if they forgot the biological basis of the sexual imperative.

The aforementioned Gore Vidal penned an essay titled just that, “The Birds and the Bees,” back in 1991, wherein he states what he says should be obvious. It is not an endorsement of straight old boy-and-girl couplings, nor is it a condemnation of any other variety of sexual expression. Indeed, to some extent it’s an argument in favor of sexual expressions that don’t add additional people to an already overcrowded environment. Vidal was famously libertine in that regard himself. He wrote novels — “The City and the Pillar,” “Myra Breckenridge” — with decidedly gay themes.

What the essay posits, the obvious but too often disregarded thing, is that men and women are not the same, that they have different roles to play in the fundamental duty of any species, which is to perpetuate itself, and that that plain reality is manifested in all types of sexual conduct.

What Vidal didn’t say, but I will, is that it’s no real surprise that AIDS, back before we knew what it was, was most prevalent among young gay males. I was a young male myself back then (far more attracted to females, which likely saved my life) and, typical of young males, was horny as a three-peckered goat. Get a couple (or more) such goats together and it’s the happy hunting ground for a sexually transmitted virus.

 

[GHT]

You know that you are getting old when something like this can bring a tear to your eye.

 

[Cepice]

There's a Dunkin' Donuts in Erfurt, I will give it a try next time.

Dear @Trenchfriend, as a New England native, home of Dunkin Donuts, I can tell you that this is truly terrible coffee. Weak, watery, it is typically loaded with cream and sugar to mask the taste. In addition, the 'donuts' are fantastically ultra-high-processed sugar bombs.

Dunkins was pretty good at one time, but that was in the 1980s. Now, it's just a low cost caffeine and sugar provider. So much so that we make comedy about it.

 

[Trenchfriend]

@Cepice
I had the same presumptions and didn't try it, currently.

 

[Zombie_61]

You know you are getting old when you start having: "Senior Moments." Technology frustrates me, I can never seem to do that which comes easily to so many others.
Trying to pay for my purchases by tapping my card on the reader. Tap! Nothing. Tap, tap, tap. Still nothing. A voice behind me suggested I use a credit card, they are much more acceptable than a driver's card. I won't repeat the obscenity that went through my head.

I can't afford to travel the world so I don't know what the average day-to-day conditions are anywhere but within the self-imposed boundaries of my daily life, but here in the southwest corner of the continental U.S. they're still using credit/debit card machines that can/will read the magnetic strip on the back of the card or the chip on the front. I much prefer that to the "tapping" nonsense, and don't know exactly why that technology was created in the first place. I'd guess there's some form of added security associated with it, but if you're too lazy to simply put your payment card into a machine and remove it a second or two later, there's really something wrong with you.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That tapping method had apparently existed for years before I had ever heard of it, or had ever actually seen it in use. The first time I saw it, earlier this year in the checkout line at the grocery store, I thought the customer was being unnecessarily rude to the clerk by gesturing with their card like that.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Back in the States three years now… and I’m still not entirely comfortable paying for stuff electronically. At first I was a dear in the headlights.