I have just had a phone call from someone doing a survey about heating and grants. At the end of the survey she was doing the usual demographics, including age, and when I said my age, her immediate response was 'You do not sound that old'. I put the phone down fast before I said something I regretted.
About the only time people look and sound the same for their age is immediately after birth. By three months some children are bigger and look more advanced than others and the divergence in looks, size maturity etc grows wider year by year.
Why cant we just accept people: how they look, how they sound without constantly measuring them up against some totally mythical stereotype of what they ought to look like at their age?
Why are we meant to look surprised and pleased when we are told we look well for our age or, worst still, young for our age, or that someone cannot believe the age we are. Would the same people make the same type of comment, but in reverse, to someone they met who looked older than their stereotype.
I know lots of people my age, some are in care homes bent by osteoporosis and/or with dementia, others are fit and well and still working. Some have white hair, some have not yet gone fully grey. But we are all the same age.
What annoys me most is that the stereotypes are always at the extreme end of looks. At my age I am expected to be white haired, helpless, with a quavery voice. I have twice had to deal with doctors, one last year, who seemed to take it as a personal insult that I did not conform to their stereotype of what they thought I should be, but that I was cognitive sound and able to discuss my condition with them and ask questions instead of just being mindlessly pathetically grateful.
Rant over, I will go and make myself a nice soothing cup of tea. with a biscuit and do whatever little old ladies of 80 are meant to do when they get a bit upset.
