An old-timer reflects that it's not what it used to be

by Jack Neely

A few weeks ago I was about to give a talk to a group of retirees, and one old guy seemed distinctly unimpressed to meet me. He didn't say much. But a woman standing with him said, "I thought you were much older"—in the sort of way you'd say, "I thought you were much better educated," or, "I thought you could read." She may have been expressing the thoughts of the other guy who had, by then, already left.

Along with canasta, history's one of those rare disciplines where you can still seem too young at 40. That's what I got to be last month, as everyone who rides the elevator in the Arnstein already knows.

In Cormac McCarthy's latest novel, Cities of the Plain, Eduardo the knife-wielding Mexican pimp says, "I am 40 years old. An old man, no? Deserving of respect, no?"

I'm older than most guys I see in Rogaine ads. I'm years older than the president's retired "senior advisor," George Stephanopoulos—who joins the other old farts on Sunday political-commentary shows. I'm years older than several prominent NBA retirees. Tennis is even worse. I played some tennis as a teenager, but the last time I picked up a racket, several of the current world champs hadn't even been born. And watching an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show the other day, the one where Andy and Barney go to their 20th high-school reunion, I suffered a cold chill when I realized I'm even older than Sheriff Taylor at his best. (I'm expecting any day now to shift into color, get an ill-tempered girlfriend, and stop being funny.)

I'm also much older than the Median Knoxvillian. In fact, the day the Median Knoxvillian was born, I was nine years old. That means I'm older than most folks.

My confusion may have less to do with my age than my generation, which is kind of a Twilight Zone in American culture. Awhile back I heard an annoyingly earnest TV debate about whether Woodstock or Lollapalooza was the greater rock festival. If I'd shown up at either shindig, I would have drawn stares; a fifth-grader at one, a thin-haired daddy at the other. At either event, groovy people all around would have smirked at me and said, "What are you doing here, kid/pop?"

I'm a few years too young to be properly considered a Baby Boomer, a few years too old for Generation X. I start wondering if anybody else was actually born in 1958, but then I'm consoled to remember Madonna, Michael Jackson, and the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. We were all born within a few weeks of each other. A little confusion about identity seems to come with that birthdate. Maybe they were doing some H-bomb testing that summer.

"You know, 40's not what it used to be," someone told me the other day. I think they meant well. You hear them nearly every week on the morning news shows; some author or doctor insisting that due to sundry breakthroughs, the ages "40" or "50" or "80" aren't what they used to be.

Maybe it's true. Maybe 40 really isn't what it used to be. In most professional sports, 40 is older than it used to be. When I was a kid, I didn't think of 40 as particularly old, partly because George Blanda was well into his 40s, and he was one of the strongest players in the NFL. But how many 40-year-old sports stars are there today? (Does NASCAR count as a sport?)

In fact, the notion of thinking of 40 as old isn't necessarily an old-fashioned thing that's being outmoded. It may be a relatively new thing that outmoded an older idea.

If you spend a lot of time looking at old newspapers and magazines—and I'm not saying you should—one thing you notice, over and over, is that before 1950 or so, ads for razors and beer and automobiles often featured smiling gray-haired people using the product, having a big time with it. You don't see that nearly as much anymore. Though people are allegedly living longer today, the typical magazine-ad model is only getting younger, ready to be put to pasture at 26.

Two centuries ago—when our founding fathers were careful to make sure that you couldn't run for president until you were at least 35—men tried to look much older than they were by wearing white-powdered wigs. Back then, age was status, respectability, power, wisdom. Grecian formula would have seemed unprofitable; a 40-year-old in 1790 was embarrassed of his relative youth, trying to look much older than he was.

I read a poll a few years ago asking adults, "How old were you during the best time of your life?" The top three answers were 17, 18, and 19. I don't think they took polls like that 200 years ago. But Thomas Jefferson, the boy wonder of the American Revolution, once said the best years of his life were those between 30 and 50.

Smack in the middle of that, of course, is 40. Anxiety about the age of 40 is, I'm beginning to suspect, a perversity that's distinctly modern. Look at maverick Knoxville editor William Rule, one of my local heroes. He was 40 in 1879, just

finishing the first quarter of his remarkable career—which ended when he was 89 and still the full-time editor of a daily newspaper.

His colleague Henry Gibson turned 40 in 1877, very early in his long and lively career. (An editor and judge, he became a U.S. Congressman when he was 57; he retired from politics at 80 and began a third career—writing epic science-fiction poetry. He died in 1938, not quite 101.)

Maybe they're right. Maybe being 40 isn't what it used to be. Maybe it's less.