Honestly, how old is too old?

Thoughts on turning 78

Friends,

The United States is 248 years old today. As nations go, we’re a spring chicken.

At 81, Joe Biden is the oldest president the United States has ever had. Donald Trump, his rival in the 2024 election, is 78. As candidates go, they’re both over the hill.

Age has become a central issue in the campaign, especially after Biden’s disappointing performance in last Thursday’s debate.

How old is too old? (I’ve addressed this before, but the topic has become so timely that it might be useful to you if I do again.)

In 1900, gerontologists considered “old” to be 47. Today, you are considered “youngest-old” at 65, “middle-old” at 75, and at 85, you are a member of the “oldest-old.”

I ask with some personal stake. Last week I turned 78. I feel fit, I swing dance and salsa, and I can do 20 pushups in a row. Yet I confess to a certain loss of, shall we say, fizz.  

Three score and ten is the number of years of life set out in the Bible. Modern technology and Big Pharma add at least a decade and a half. Beyond this is an extra helping.

“After 80, it’s gravy,” my father used to say. Joe is on the gravy train.

People treat you differently when you get old. An elderly friend once told me there were four ages to life: youth, middle age, old age, and “You look great.”

Where will it end? There’s only one possibility, and that reality occurs to me with increasing frequency. My mother passed at 86, my father two weeks before his 102nd birthday, so I’m hoping for the best, genetically speaking.

Yet I find myself reading the obituary pages with ever greater interest, curious about how long they lasted and what brought them down. I remember a New Yorker cartoon in which an older reader of the obituaries sees headlines that read only “Older Than Me” or “Younger Than Me.”

Most of the time I forget my age. Not long ago, after lunch with some of my graduate students, I caught our reflection in a store window and for an instant wondered about the identity of the little old man in our midst.

It’s not death that’s the worrying thing about a second Biden term. It’s the dwindling capacities that go with aging. “Bodily decrepitude,” said Yeats, “is wisdom.” I have accumulated somewhat more of the former than the latter. Joe strikes me as having a considerable amount of both.

I still have my teeth, in contrast to my grandfather, who I recall storing his choppers in a glass next to his bed, and have so far steered clear of heart attack or stroke (I pray I’m not tempting fate by my stating this fact). But I’ve lived through several kidney stones and had both hips replaced.

And my hearing is crap. Even with hearing aids, I have a hard time understanding someone talking to me in a noisy restaurant. You’d think that the sheer market power of 60 million boomers losing their hearing would be enough to generate at least one chain of quiet restaurants.

When I get together with old friends, our first ritual is an “organ recital” — how’s your back? knee? heart? hip? shoulder? eyesight? hearing? prostate? hemorrhoids? digestion?

The recital can run — and ruin — an entire lunch.

The question my friends and I jokingly (and brutishly) asked one other in college — “getting much?” — now refers not to sex but to sleep.

I don’t know anyone over 75 who sleeps through the night. When he was president, Bill Clinton prided himself on getting only about four hours. But he was in his 40s then. (I also recall Cabinet meetings where he dozed off.) How does Biden manage?

My memory for names is horrible. I once asked Ted Kennedy how he recalled names, and he advised that if a man is over 50, just ask, “How’s the back?” and he’ll think you know him.

I often can’t remember where I put my wallet and keys or why I’ve entered a room. And certain proper nouns have disappeared altogether. Even when rediscovered, they have a diabolical way of disappearing again. Biden’s Secret Service detail can worry about his wallet, and he’s got a teleprompter for wayward nouns, but last week’s debate revealed some diminution in the memory department.

I have lost much of my enthusiasm for travel and feel, as did Philip Larkin, that I would like to visit China, but only on the condition that I could return home that night. Air Force One makes this possible for Biden, under most circumstances. If not, it has a first-class bedroom and personal bathroom.

I’m told that after the age of 60, one loses half an inch of height every five years. This doesn’t appear to be a problem for Biden, but it presents a challenge for me, considering that at my zenith I didn’t quite make it to five feet. If I live as long as my father did, I may vanish.

Another diminution I’ve noticed is tact. Months ago, I gave the finger to a driver who passed me recklessly. Giving the finger to another driver is itself a reckless act.

I’m also noticing I have less patience, perhaps because of an unconscious “use by” timer that’s now clicking away. Increasingly, I wonder why I’m wasting time with this or that buffoon. I’m less tolerant of long waiting lines, automated phone menus, and Republicans.

Cicero claimed “older people who are reasonable, good-tempered, and gracious bear aging well. Those who are mean-spirited and irritable will be unhappy at every stage of their lives.” Easy for Cicero to say. He was forced into exile and murdered at the age of 63, his decapitated head and right hand hung up in the Forum by order of the mean-spirited and irritable Marcus Antonius.

How the hell did Biden maintain his patience when he was on the debate stage with the most vile person in public life?

The style sections of the papers tell us that the 70s are the new 50s. Septuagenarians are supposed to be fit and alert, exercise like mad, have rip-roaring sex, and party until dawn. Rubbish. Inevitably, things begin falling apart. My aunt, who lived far into her nineties, told me “getting old isn’t for sissies.” Toward the end, she repeated that phrase every two to three minutes.

Philosopher George Santayana claimed to prefer old age to all others. “Old age is, or may be as in my case, far happier than youth,” he wrote. “I was never more entertained or less troubled than I am now.” True for me too, in a way. Despite Trump, the Republican Party, climate change, near record inequality, potential nuclear war, and another strain of COVID making the rounds, I remain upbeat — largely because I still spend most days with people in their 20s who buoy my spirits. Maybe Biden does, too.

But I’m feeling more and more out of it. I’m doing videos on TikTok and Snapchat, yet when my students talk about Ariana Grande or Selena Gomez or Jared Leto, I don’t have a clue whom they’re talking about (and frankly don’t care).

I find myself using words — “hence,” “utmost,” “therefore,” “tony,” “brilliant” “valise” — that my younger colleagues find charmingly old-fashioned. If I refer to “Rose Mary Woods” or “Jackie Robinson” or “Ed Sullivan” or “Mary Jo Kopechne,” they’re bewildered.

Last spring, I made a hard decision. At the end of the semester, I taught my last class after more than 40 years of teaching.

Why? I wanted to leave on a high note, when I felt I could still do the job well. I didn’t want to wait until I could no longer give students what they need and deserve. And I hated the thought of students or colleagues whispering about the old guy who shouldn’t be teaching anymore.

Getting too old to do a job isn’t a matter of chronological age. It’s a matter of being lucid enough to know when you should exit the stage before you no longer have what it takes to do the job well.

It saddens me that I won’t be heading back into the classroom this fall. But it was time for me to go.

Happy July Fourth.