Definition of elderly

There are no privileged frames of reference. My 12 year old grandson describes me as old. I describe my 90 year old Mum as elderly.

In Australian aboriginal culture older people who are seen as deserving of respect because of their knowledge and wisdom and life experience are called aunties and uncles, even though they may be anywhere from 40 to 80. I quite like that.

Oh yea?

Ah "jeni" the law is a law unto itself. Hospital consultants too, still get addressed formally, in some cases?
I think my MIL does not really consider herself elderly although, to cut a long story short, body totally trashed. But brain still same as ever (chatty, stubborn, reads several books a week) so maybe that is what counts. Currently insisting that she can go home and look after herself (after being taken care of for 18 months following pancreatitis) ...

Well, I can't get our clerks at the tribunals to call me br first name, even though I've known some of them for decades!
Apparently it's ' not done'
Even some of the judges insist on calling me Dr.
I prefer jeni!

My MiL always referred to her neighbour as 'the old lady' because she liked to have meals on wheels, went to a day centre and had a daily carer. She was 10 years younger than MiL who lived independently in her top floor flat until she died there aged 98. She shopped, cooked for herself, did not have a cleaner. We visited reguarly and she was always doing a crossword or reading a book. She had arthritis and was very deaf but never thought she was elderly! Hope I will be like her.

I find it hard not to become more critical and judgemental with age. I think this is partly because one has a longer perspective and more experience of how things work and fail to work. I can see how some things deteriorate, some mistakes get repeated and so on. This combined with a scientific education that encourages critical thinking.
I think when people get huffy about modern day manners there is a conflict between the internalised "shoulds" of their own childhood and the differing standards of today. The thing about objecting to first names is alien to me, because I worked for years in business environments where everybody uses first names even when it is junior staff talking to to MDs of big companies. So I am guessing this particular gripe is a generational thing.

Yes, I agree - that's just intrusive.

I agree! But that is very different from social intercourse!

When I was in my forties, a therapist I was seeing at the time said I was like a teenager (not good). Guiltily I resolved to try to grow up a bit (throwing out my bright yellow trousers as a start).

I think I must have succeeded and made it to being old because I don't always like to be called by my first name by some young whippersnapper who has phoned to sell me space in Yellow Pages or whatever.

I've just looked it up in the dictionary - it means old or aging. We who are old or aging cannot define ourselves it has to be up to others to judge whether we are elderly or not. We can't prevent them from doing it. BUT looking back to my younger days I thought people of 60 or 65 were old and I assume young people today have not altered. Just that it is regarded now as a crime to be old or is used to insult.
Now, just not wanting every Tom, Dick and Harry calling us by our first names is sign of being elderly. Well I'll have to risk it because I prefer my doctor/ plumber/cleaner to call me Mrs.

Deep down I just don't care! At the moment when I get out of bed in the morning I feel old and get younger as the day moves on.

My granny, almost until her dying day at the age of 89, was walking down to the shops and back every day. She lived at the top of the village and was tiny but tough.

My dad at the age of 80 used to meet his mates in town once a week, they were all more or less of the same age and they called themselves..... re-cycled teenagers and they used to act like teenagers !
On another note dad would not go on day trips with the other folks that lived in the same sheltered accommmodation as him. He said he was not going to spend the day with a lot of old people.
Age can be a state of mind that is until the body aches in places where you didn't know you had places and the hearing is going

Do you want to come to Borneo with me, bluesky?

Definition of elderly...uhmm I'll be elderly when I'll no longer want to venture out, see people, travel, when I'll be content just to sit by the fire with a cat or dog as companion, when I'll have seen enough of the outside world!

I felt old as a child and have been trying to break out into being a youngster for quite some time!

I'll be old when I stop wanting to explore the world. My ex husband was elderly at 25. He was always telling me to grow up - so I did, and left him.

Hospital staff asked me how would like to be addressed. I told 'em...Annie.

In NZ my sister and I were referred to as 'the elder ladies' but this was a sort of honorary title. I'm not elderly even if parts of my body feel like it.

Odd though because my first husband's nickname was Elderberry and DD1 is known as Elderflower.

Nor me Bags!