Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Query: How do you know when you're middle-aged?

At a recent dinner with friends in their late 30s & early 40s, I asked (in pretty serious fashion) if we are middle aged. The responses took two forms: a) not taking the question very seriously or b) working very hard to dispel the notion that we've achieved this dubious milestone. I've contemplated the question lately because - among other things - my youngest child is about to be a school-aged child and my parents are about to retire. I don't know how one knows that one is middle-aged. I haven't found (or, in truth, formally sought) a definition. There's strong evidence for the proposition, though:
  • If you doubled my current age, you'd get 75. A little young to shuffle off but not shocking.
  • I have age spots.
  • Music & apparel from my teen years is back in the popular culture.
  • Yes, I'm rather bald, but that process started when I was 23, so it's not a strong indicator one way or the other.
  • I've reached that age at which I don't undertake exercise without the proper apparel for the given activity.
I think I'm middle-aged, but contemplating the subject has made clear that the question of whether one has achieved this phase of life is difficult to answer definitively. It's easy to know when you're a teenager. Thanks to a 90s drama, we now know it's a thing to be a thirtysomething and by extension a twentysomething. Obviously, it's easy to know when you're in those brackets. Not so, middle-age. Are you middle-aged? How do you know?
at

3 comments:

  1. AzureJuly 19, 2011 at 2:26 PM

    By the time we hit forty, I think we are undoubtedly middle aged. There's no way around it.

    Honestly, I can't think of any good arguments to say that we *aren't* middle aged right now, can you? Maybe if we had never been married or never had kids (which doesn't apply to either of us).

    ReplyDelete
  2. JFoJuly 19, 2011 at 3:54 PM

    This is an interesting line of reasoning. Single, childless people the same age as us are somehow younger than us? If true, that's a serious gyp.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AzureJuly 20, 2011 at 3:10 PM

    "Middle-aged" is primarily a social construct rather than a scientific term (or we wouldn't be debating it in the first place). Hence we have to look to social cues.

    ReplyDelete