Gransnet?

And the advantage of my take on silver surfer and being an old person is that all the words silver surfer mean are that I'm old enough to have silvering hair (that doesn't mean a lot) and I'm using the Web. What's the big deal? I had silver hairs when I was thirty. I have more now.

Similarly, old person only means I'm older than many others, especially ones who would usually be called young.

In short, I'm not offendable because none of that is anything to be offended about, nor to be insulting about. End of problem.

Bags I didn't say there was anything wrong with being an old woman.

I am one.

I just don't feel like one.

I am proud.

I am not a freak.

That is not the case at all absent I am not suggesting people stop growing mentally at a certain age. Of course they grow mentally, how awful to be stuck at a certain age, that would mean brain damage, surely. Sometimes I think you don't read people's comments. How many times must I say it's a feeling that a person becomes aware of being an adult with responsibilities at a certain age. Not that they still don't grow mentally.

Not good at jokes absent I am not surprised. Call it a hunch, call it a good memory, but yes I have wondered if you and Jess are the same person.

ella, please don't mind my use of the word freak. It was used playfully, honestly .

...........(mumbles)..........66 isn't old.........

You wait another few years.........

Gosh, faye, that really surprises me! I don't think jess and absent are anything like each other – well, certainly not enough to be confused; they are both intelligent and write clearly.

Faye I invariably read posts carefully.

If someone feels, say 25 mentally, but is, in fact, 70, then surely she has stopped developing and growing and has no use for the experience and wisdom she might have gained in the intervening 45 years. If, however, she has taken on board the experience and wisdom of those 45 years, then she is deluding herself if she believes that she still feels 25 mentally. It is not possible to feel both 25 and 70 in one's mind simultaneously. I recognise that it sometimes seems something of a surprise or, indeed, a shock to realise how quickly one has become old but that is a different matter all together.

I'd be worried if I thought I hadn't changed since I was 17. I certainly wasn't grown-up then, having led a pretty sheltered life. I don't know when I finally 'grew up'. Possibly when I realised I was the oldest one left in the family. But I don't know if I feel like an old woman because I don't know how other elderly people feel! I know how I feel and who I am and that's enough for me.

Same here, anno, but I do know what I don't feel like anymore, and that's a young woman. My daughters have taken/are taking over that role. And I don't mind if anyone else thinks I'm old. What other people think makes no difference to what I am.

BTW, Minibags announced recently that she no longer has the oldest parents! She has a pal in her maths class whose parents are even older than hers

The question is though - Do you feel like a young man??
Answer - it depends on who he is! That nice boy from McFly, except he just got married, or that nice Adam Henson on Countryfile.......

Thank you bags.
(Basking in absent's reflected glory here... )
I certainly don't feel like an old woman yet. I certainly do feel like a grown up with mature judgement, wisdom and confidence.
I always was fairly uninhibited "jeni" but so many women don't seem able to let go and "wear purple" even when they reach 50/60/70 because they are still worrying about what other people think or how they should behave.
My mother once said that it was interesting to see people change when you knew them all their lives. She went on to say that I had changed a lot since I was a child. That was about 20 years ago and I have changed a lot since then.
Some change comes from increased self knowledge, some from coping with difficult emotional challenges and some from experience of a range of work experiences. Underneath there are some basic personality traits, but its what you do with those traits I believe.
By 'eck when I think of the young woman who was married to my ex!!!!!! Who on earth was she???

" It is not possible to feel both 25 and 70 in one's mind simultaneously."

Yes it is. It definitely is. One and the same time.

Bags I'm impressed! I agree with everything you have said. As an old woman in her 70s I admit to being old. If you don't die then you get old. It's a simple as that. When I was young I really lived- sometimes very intensively, was passionate and impulsive. Thank heaven I don't feel like that now! It would be too much for me.
I feel very comfortable with my age. Surely someone who feels like 30 inside is not being truthful about themselves. Noone when growing older can stay the same. What they probably mean is that they feel younger than the stereotype of a 56 year old women. The fact that they themselves are 56 means that a 56 year old can feel lively and active.

Does no-one else suddenly think 'cripes [or somesuch], how I did suddenly come to be the grown up?'

j07 Only if they can compartmentalise to the point of psychosis.

graces, now you're talking! . But, to be honest, I don't think I could cope with a toy boy – not now, though there was a time....

absent, is it what's called cognitive dissonance – believing two things at the same time which conflict with each other?

margaretx, I'm glad someone understands! Sometimes (well, quite often, actually) I feel like a complete freak on gransnet

Yes Bags. Like the Red Queen who could regularly manage five of them before breakfast.

That's cognitive dissonances not young men.

How about 'touchy bad-tempered old women net'. And I suppose having threads deleted without explanation is all part and parcel of being condescended to because of age. Training for the future.

Thus spawning about 16 threads all going on about why were those threads deleted.
I think I will while away half an hour deleting old emails...

In the old days, when the women's movement was active and dynamic, we referred to the three ages of a woman. The Maiden, The Mother and the Crone. Mary Daly's book 'Pure Lust' gives some good insights on this.

I now rejoice in being a crone and only wish that its perjotative resonances did not still obtain.

In the form of the novel, Marion Zimmer Bradley's novel The Mists of Avalon gives a poetic and imaginative view.

I'm happy in my mind! It's just my body that lets me down. But then like Bags I was arthritic as a teen.

Loved MZB's books!

I like that, miceElf....... Cronesnet