“What a drag it is getting old …”
When Mick Jagger sang “Mother’s Little Helper” in the summer of 1966, he was lamenting a young mother in her 30s who couldn’t make it through her day without the help of pills.
I was 16 that summer, and there’s no way I can explain how or why we considered 30 ancient in those days. But we did, and we figured we would live 50 years before we turned 30.
That was a long time ago, though. The first baby boomers turned 30 in 1975, the year before the Bicentennial. The last ones made it there in 1994.
A generation ago.
Now the oldest of us are 76, the youngest 57. And we live in a world where even being 50 puts you on the critical list as far as employability. It used to be that people could work as long as they wanted, or at least as long as they were still productive.
Not anymore.
In many parts of the economy, if you’re out of work and over 50, you might as well be 80. Nobody is looking to hire you. Any job you can do, they can hire somebody just out of school who will do three-quarters as well as you for half the price.
And a young kid is a lot less likely to replay “Why?” when the boss says “Jump.”
In fact, I’m reminded of the older man going in for a job interview. The boss interviewing him asks, “What’s your greatest flaw?” The old man replies, “Honesty.” The boss says that he doesn’t think honesty is a flaw.
The old man says, “Who gives a shit what you think?”
Yep, that’s us.
I have one friend who’s 68. He has interviewed for more than a hundred jobs, and in the last 30 years he’s had one full-time job permanent enough to have benefits. That job lasted a year a little less than 20 years ago.
I have another friend of the same age who has been working in the lower levels of radio, small city stations where the work is fun but the pay is in the just-enough-to-get-by category.
Both of them have at least fudged their age on applications when they apply for jobs.
One was coloring his hair 25 years ago. I don’t think the other one ever has. I never did until today, and I didn’t do it for a job. It has been nearly nine years since I (involuntarily) retired, and my last few years of nearly 18 on my last job were so unpleasant I realized after a while that the only boss I could tolerate in the remaining years of my life was my wife.
I was fortunate enough to have a wife who made plenty of money and who had worked with me to plan our retirement some years before. We had enough money and enough equity in our California home to move to Georgia, buy a house for cash and retire.
We’ve been here 11 years and haven’t used the bulk of her 401(k) yet.
I’m pretty sure I’ll never apply for a job again. I’ll be 72 in December and as I mentioned earlier, it has been nearly 14 years since I had a job.
Over the last few years, I’ve grown a beard two or three times, and as you can see from the one picture, most of the beard is almost completely white. The mustache is mostly brown and what would be mutton-chop sideburns without the beard are brown too.
My lovely wife hates the beard, mostly the white part of it. So we made an agreement. I could keep the beard as long as I colored the white out of it. I had no idea how to do that, so when I went to the drugstore, I looked and after a while found small boxes for hair dye aimed specifically at the coarser hairs on cheeks and chin.
I actually had it for a week or so before I had the nerve to use it. I mixed the dye and combed it into my beard. At first it didn’t appear to be having any effect, but when I looked at it after five minutes, it looked like it did 20 years ago.
At first it embarrassed me. I’ve never been self-conscious about aging. In fact, for most of my life people have guessed my age 5-7 years younger than it really is. That was embarrassing when I was 12, but not so bad by the time I was approaching 40.
So yeah, it’s still a drag getting old.
I can no longer make 20-foot jump shots, roll six strikes in a row and bowl a 222 or slash line drives up the middle. My golf game was getting seriously better, although back problems have kept me off the course and I’m going to start again next month.
Maybe I’ll do even better now that I look 20 years younger.
A drag getting old? Maybe, but it must have some benefits.
I’ll tell you when I find them,