Quote:
Originally Posted by mountainsoft
I don't "feel" like I'm 56, at least compared to what I remember of my grandparents in their 50's.
|
When I was a wee bairn, the oldest person I knew was my paternal grandmother. She was born around the turn of the 20th century. So in the early 1960s, the furthest back I can remember, she would have been just starting her early 60s.
And you know what? At 62 or so, she really was old! It's not just my imagination, either. She was frail and withered and bent. Somehow she made it beyond 70, although she was bedridden her final few years.
But she also was typical for her generation, at least the sample set available to a five year old me. She came from a time when polio was legitimate threat, when diabetes was a death sentence instead of a pill. It didn't help that she burned a pack or two of Pall Malls every day of her life, but so did a majority of her peers. Activity consisted of indoor housekeeping rather than deliberate exercise, and while she wasn't overweight that's probably mostly attributable to being an indifferent cook.
A generation later, my late MIL resembled my dear GM. Another lifelong cigarette junkie, she was already brittle and slowing down in her 60s when lung cancer took her out.
However, fast forward to today and my own DW looks and acts much younger than those women from earlier epochs. Not smoking plays a part, but regardless of the reasons she is simply much younger than our ancestors at a similar age.
Gratuitous thread hijack: I expect her to outlive me by a fur piece, ergo I'm delaying SS to 70 (if I make it that far) for her benefit.