daily words
starring the dictionary.com word of the dayWednesday, January 16, 2008
nonagenarian - 07.08.16 - 569
nonagenarian
At the age of ninety what would you look back on in your life and remember fondly? Somebody entering into that exclusive club of nonagenarians now would have been born in the year 1918. It's kind of difficult for me to even imagine what their life would have been like, what they would have seen over such a long period of time.
What would it have been like to be a kid back then? I t must have been totally foreign, the vernacular different, the appearance of everything, the technology. I find it so easy now to take for granted everything I've got, so much so that I find it even a little difficult to imagine what life would have been like before all these things were common, easy and nearly free.
What would it have been like to witness the rise and spread of first the radio then television and now the Internet? Is it naive of me to think that the accelerating pace of advance through my youth has better prepared me to deal with a lifetime of changes coming at a still faster rate? I think it probably is.
My grandparents aren't yet part of this group and I can only hope they do manage to join. But even if they do, will I really manage not to squander more opportunities to talk with them? They've had so much opportunity to see and to do so many things and I never really asked them about it. So many vacations and visits, even living with them for a few months I never thought to stop, take a seat and just talk to them.
Is this arrogance now, for me to think that they would even want to sit there and subject themselves to a string of what i can only imagine to be inane questions from their point of view? What was life like when you were my age? Is that a stupid question? I am not even sure what I'd want to know, maybe it would be wiser to simply ask them to tell me about their lives, about everything that happened before they had grandkids, before they had kids even.
What do they make of the so-called issues today? What were the hot topics for them, and what do they think of them now? How much truth is there to the statement "youth is wasted on the young"?
Would they mind frittering away a meal on this talk? An afternoon or evening? A whole day? A week? How old were my parents when their grandparents died?
I wonder, with the life expectancy increasing as it is, might nonagenarians become a less and less exclusive group? Pretty much by definition I guess they'd have to as people live longer and longer. But that's just so amazing to think about, ninety years living their lives, taking in the world. What am I going to do with my time?
What's next? What happens if at some point ninety becomes middle age? The prospect of so much more time seems daunting, a little. I guess it'd have to be a slow change and people would adjust in a natural way, as it seems we do in all cases.
Well, maybe not all, there are of course still these vestigial behaviors and quirks that seem to belong in an earlier age but I imagine in time those too shall pass.
At the age of ninety what would you look back on in your life and remember fondly? Somebody entering into that exclusive club of nonagenarians now would have been born in the year 1918. It's kind of difficult for me to even imagine what their life would have been like, what they would have seen over such a long period of time.
What would it have been like to be a kid back then? I t must have been totally foreign, the vernacular different, the appearance of everything, the technology. I find it so easy now to take for granted everything I've got, so much so that I find it even a little difficult to imagine what life would have been like before all these things were common, easy and nearly free.
What would it have been like to witness the rise and spread of first the radio then television and now the Internet? Is it naive of me to think that the accelerating pace of advance through my youth has better prepared me to deal with a lifetime of changes coming at a still faster rate? I think it probably is.
My grandparents aren't yet part of this group and I can only hope they do manage to join. But even if they do, will I really manage not to squander more opportunities to talk with them? They've had so much opportunity to see and to do so many things and I never really asked them about it. So many vacations and visits, even living with them for a few months I never thought to stop, take a seat and just talk to them.
Is this arrogance now, for me to think that they would even want to sit there and subject themselves to a string of what i can only imagine to be inane questions from their point of view? What was life like when you were my age? Is that a stupid question? I am not even sure what I'd want to know, maybe it would be wiser to simply ask them to tell me about their lives, about everything that happened before they had grandkids, before they had kids even.
What do they make of the so-called issues today? What were the hot topics for them, and what do they think of them now? How much truth is there to the statement "youth is wasted on the young"?
Would they mind frittering away a meal on this talk? An afternoon or evening? A whole day? A week? How old were my parents when their grandparents died?
I wonder, with the life expectancy increasing as it is, might nonagenarians become a less and less exclusive group? Pretty much by definition I guess they'd have to as people live longer and longer. But that's just so amazing to think about, ninety years living their lives, taking in the world. What am I going to do with my time?
What's next? What happens if at some point ninety becomes middle age? The prospect of so much more time seems daunting, a little. I guess it'd have to be a slow change and people would adjust in a natural way, as it seems we do in all cases.
Well, maybe not all, there are of course still these vestigial behaviors and quirks that seem to belong in an earlier age but I imagine in time those too shall pass.
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