Poll: what's the worst part of getting old?

only if the aging baldy singer-songwriters aren't boring.

cancer, arthritis, risk of addiction to prescription pain meds, dementia, death

I'm 36 and voting DENTAL. I started flossing regularly at about 30 but it was too late. Things have been going all to shit the past 3 years.

Oh my teeth started going around age 20. Forget that.

yeah Alfred otm but the singer-songwriter slide into schmaltz is part of a more general thing:

if you don't watch out as you get older you become prone to this particularly intoxicating state of wistful, sentimental, nostalgic melancholy which is *about* the extent of the pastness of your own past, its irretrievability, your mortality, friends who are dead, love affairs that are long gone etc.

it can be a beautiful feeling to just embrace and let it happen, but it can also turn you into a sap and a bore if you aren't careful, because it rests upon a loss of curiosity and interest in what is happening now and what is to come in favor of what already was

only if the aging baldy singer-songwriters aren't boring

well yeah but name me a genre that doesn't apply to. i reckon most people who consciously drift into "old people music" probably liked some awful guff when they were younger too

worst part of aging is regretting thigns you haven't done imo.

Losing libido or otherwise is all very well if you lose it at exactly the same rate as whoever you might be sharing it with.

I started flossing regularly at about 30 but it was too late.

Oh no... (31, hate flossing.)

other, death

― thomp, Tuesday, May 10, 2011 11:55 AM

The ones that have started to show themselves to me:

Losing hair where you don't want to lose it
Growing hair where you don't want to grow it
Graying hair
Eating/Digestion problems
Memory problems

The first two in tandem are, at this point, an unbeatable combo.

(Graying hair is pretty awesome, tho.)

They're not the worst part of aging, but all these new* moles on my face are really pissing me off.

* arrived in the last five years or so

Going with hearing here, which didn't hit me until last year. Specifically it was a Mastodon show, but I'm guessing it was straw-camel's back thing. Already noticing myself asking people to repeat things more often. Oh well. Overall I feel good physically, so so far I'm not complaining. Definitely losing hair on top, but that doesn't bother me.

the best thing about getting old is that you can enjoy being uncool

Went to bar full of hipsters last night, looked around at busy groups of cool kids, sat alone, read book, felt not a single twinge of discomfort. Thought: WHY DID THIS TAKE ME SO LONG, THIS IS AWESOME.

haha exactly!

Last two posts totally otm.

Hi, old person here (50).

Hasn't happened at all:
Losing hair where you don't want to lose it
Deteriorating hearing
Deteriorating vision
Graying hair
Papery skin/loss of elasticity in skin/wrinkles
Slower reflexes

Right, I was going to categorise the list but it seems they are mostly not happening as yet.

So, yay me, I guess.

What's not on the list:

The idea that 100 years ago is something that actually exists on film. and that you can see things from 50 years ago that look like they were filmed yesterday.

Some other stuff that might depress you (i.e. people not around anymore, let's put it that way)

Then again, it's sunny, there are people around that you can have a laff with, also that the idea of being old is not something you have to subscribe to nowadays. Back when I was a kid, people of 20-30 would dress like they were 50-60. Nowadays, it's the other way around.

ya but you were secretly cooler than them in that scenario so it doesn't count xp

Additions?

Increased tolerance for aging, balding male singer-songwriters.
Nope.

The real worst part of getting old: Getting old alone.
Less alone now than I've ever been.

OK, when you say old, where is the dotted line?

x-posts It's totally liberating and awesome and I think it happens, in part, because you realize that so much that you maybe once considered cool is just dumb bs.

unless you were reading 'the girl with the dragon tattoo' or 'twilight' xp

looooooooool

Went to bar full of hipsters last night, looked around at busy groups of cool kids, sat alone, read book, felt not a single twinge of discomfort. Thought: WHY DID THIS TAKE ME SO LONG, THIS IS AWESOME.

― Back up the lesbian canoe (Laurel), Tuesday, 10 May 2011 16:17 (6 minutes ago) Permalink

Were you at Harefield Rd? I think I saw you.

Voting for Moles and other lawn care issues

lol no. Un P.

Another bad thing: Walking around with a picture of yourself at 25 in your mind, then passing a mirror and facing reality.

The young people don't ask you for after work drinks anymore.

Binge drinking over 40 doesn't look the same as binge drinking at 23.

Having to listen to 25 year olds say "I can't believe how old I am!"

Listening to 23 year olds talk about high school and their parents.

I defintiely don't need any more moles than i already have, thanks.

Is it true that Un P is a good pick-up joint? Everyone says that but I never see evidence. But then again, I am old, thus invisible.

A good thing though is thinking your getting old and then having something remind you that you're still pretty young in the whole scheme of things. That's a nice feeling.

The worst part about getting old are those pesky kids who keep knocking down my fence.

Having to listen to 25 year olds say "I can't believe how old I am!"

lol.

Un P was a good pick-up joint years ago, no clue now. I bailed when it got wall-to-wall crowded and it started to feel like a place where ppl from LI went to experience "Williamsburg."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbUnfvq7uzQ

think i mite go vampire or somethin when i turn 30 or make sum kinda infernal bargain idk ill find a way out

Yeah, the crowd keeps me away. But even so, going to a bar alone and not giving a shit is one of the great pleasures of life. Though it's a different thing for guys, because usually no one will talk to you if you're not famous or average-looking, whereas a single woman will inevitibly get chatted up.

yeah, solo bar attendance is a much different proposition for women i think.

another thing that sucks about age: when people stop going "wow, you don't look it" after they've asked you how old you are

lol

Worst thing is probably losing the habit of enthusiasm or wonder. Look at the kids on the subway who are so excited to just be looking out the window, and are fully present.

Or age spots, those are pretty stupid too.

yeah, solo bar attendance is a much different proposition for women i think.

It is. It's mostly fine but I had a really awful experience a couple months ago that I think has put me off this for a while. I don't really like bars much anymore any way though so I'm not too sad about it.

think i mite go vampire or somethin when i turn 30 or make sum kinda infernal bargain idk ill find a way out

― Lamp, Tuesday, May 10, 2011 12:34 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

I once had a batshit crazy real estate agent smoke me up and then tell me how she had stopped aging and would teach me how I could do so as well. Should have taken her up on the offer tbh. I've just decided I'm going to age backwards so next birthday will be my last. Ppl still routinely tell me I look a lot younger than I am so I'm ok with all this. Might be singing a diff tune in 10 years though.

btw that real estate lady also believed in shape shifters and had painted portals to other worlds all over her bedroom out of which she conducted her side job of dealing weed. I didn't end up renting any of the places she showed me but I got a really amazing and bizarre experience out of that afternoon.

metabolism slowdown, tho tbh that's been hitting me since i was 21

Always been goin bald so fuckit you get used to it early.

The real worst part of getting old: Getting old alone.

yarp. Where is "watching friends and relatives dying ahead of you"?

Honestly though for me the worst part about aging is none of the above, it's wondering how I'm going to fit in all the things I still want to do/experience.

"Memory problems" is the one that concerns me the most.

the worst part of getting old is when your friends and relatives start buying you mugs and plaques that say shit like "I cannot see, I cannot pee, I cannot chew, I cannot screw" and expect you to laugh it off and display it on your desk b/c as an old person you are supposed to have a good sense of humor about your decline and death. whereas in reality your cackling is just a way of drowning out the rumblings of mortality (or possibly just indigestion) and you find the stuff totally offensive and disturbing.

http://i52.tinypic.com/309hshj.jpg

if aging gracefully means turning into Maxine, then I don't think I'm really cut out for this aging thing.

think i mite go vampire or somethin when i turn 30 or make sum kinda infernal bargain idk ill find a way out

I'm going the cryogenically-frozen-severed-head route myself. You know, like Walt Disney, or Hitler.

Serious answer, though- definitely the missed opportunities/things not done part. I still can't walk by colleges without dying a little bit.

absolutely clean glasses is otm though: I can more or less deal with failing body parts or at least take the sting off physical decline by telling myself that I was never much of athlete or hottie to begin with). but when I start losing my memory and losing my very sense of self, that's when I'll start getting really depressed about it all. being able to live a rich Walter Mitty-ish inner life is one of the great luxuries afforded to us at even the worst of times, and when that's taken away, there's nothing left to look forward to, really.

"Memory problems" is the one that concerns me the most.

― I'm at the combination pizza butt and taco hell (absolutely clean glasses), Tuesday, May 10, 2011 12:54 PM (18 minutes ago)

otm

physical decline doesn't faze me all that much. I've never been a fine physical specimen, so run of the mill wear-and-tear (moles, wrinkles) isn't going to spoil anything worth holding on to. decreased mobility is somewhat more alarming, but even then I can just say fuck off to the real world and lead an exciting Snoopy Dog existence in my imagination. but when my memory starts to fail and I start losing my very sense of self, that's when I'll have nothing to look forward to or escape to, and life isn't really worth living at that point.

I'd be more comfortable if all his sentences about 'you' were rewritten as 'I'. That would be fine. But he's reaching for universals, hopefully for a kind of 'wisdom of the elders' in 400 words, which is bound to fail the test of reality. For example, if all that were true of 80 year olds, then they would apply equally to Trump and to every equally old person everywhere. A moment's thought shows that is not correct.

Aimless, you're engaging in some major pedantry here with all due respect. You're like the old school ILXors who got miffed when I said "Bernard Sumner's the best lyric writer ever" instead of "I think Bernard Sumner's the best lyric writer ever."

Bob Dylan's not like other 80-year-old dudes, got it, move on

"people my age / they don't do the things I do"

I wonder if there are more 49 year-olds today doing the things that Neil Young did in 1995 than there were then.

― Halfway there but for you, Friday, May 8, 2026 3:22 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

xps - Not so much pedantry as being told what I shall feel in a few years and finding more than half the statements to be either inapplicable (e.g. wrong in my case) or else a kind of fortune cookie truism. I called it "blathering a bit" because just about any similar attempt to summarize the best and worst parts of old age in a few profound statements would have the same problem. If anything, the older you get, the more individuated you become and less easily reduced to a formula, like old trees shaped by a couple centuries of weather.

But I can understand wanting to believe this summary will fit you at 80 and being irritated at being told it is like any other prediction of the future.

I just didn’t like it much because I don’t like Dylan

I don't have to believe it. The point of a maxim is that it should sound cool.

it sounds cool as hell. Dylan is the best

I can't speak for anybody else, but in no way am I looking for veracity here, going through it like a checklist or something (yes, no, yes, yes...I couldn't anyway, not for another 16 years). Some of what he writes is very clear ("You don't chase the parade anymore"), some of it more like riddles to figure out ("People treat you like you've either solved something or you've lost something, and you haven't"), and they just work together in tandem and produce an effect that's hard to explain, in the same way that the brilliance of "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" is hard to explain.

I only like what Dylan did up to 1966 and how he trolled the folkies.

Many fine -- one could say universal -- nuggets in there.

honestly i think that the hatred comes not from hating him or even his music that much, but from hating self-righteous liberal boomers who pointed to him as evidence of their generation’s greatness for much of my life. shut the fuck up, you ruined the world!!

That's ok. He hated those people more than you did.

Longer times to recover from injury or exercise

Feeling this.

honestly i think that the hatred comes not from hating him or even his music that much, but from hating self-righteous liberal boomers who pointed to him as evidence of their generation’s greatness for much of my life. shut the fuck up, you ruined the world!!

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Monday, June 15, 2026 4:20 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's ok. He hated those people more than you did.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Monday, June 15, 2026

yeah, Dylan's among the boomers who hates boomers as much as we do

He isn’t a boomer …

some of it more like riddles to figure out ("People treat you like you've either solved something or you've lost something, and you haven't")

I liked this part a lot, and think I know what he means - some people think "oh Dylan's in his 80's and still going, he must have it all figured out", others think "man he's not the talent he used to be", and for him neither of those are right. The latter ofc applies more to him and other celebs than Joe Average.

He isn’t a boomer …

slightly older, but claimed by the boomers certainly

Most generational icons are always a few years older than their generation.

haha badly worded, not always, since I did say most

"People treat you like you've either solved something or you've lost something, and you haven't"

= "People treat you like you've attained great wisdom (and you haven't), or like you no longer understand the world around you (and you understand it no more or no less than you ever have)."

Dylan puts it better, though. Great line.

Worst part about getting old = people becoming Dylan and Beatles fans.

We need a FAST warning sign system for Beatlemania

"you still want to say yes to everything, and the world moves without asking"

le sigh

Idk that’s along the lines of what my mom has said about it this past year. My mom’s just a normal old lady who put on Dylan records to clean house when I was a kid, and I still like a lot of those songs.