End of the Line?

In a recent report, The Globe and Mail journalist, Michael Valpy, dwelt at length on the vicissitudes of growing old. My email to him:

I trust the second paragraph of your August 8 item was tongue-in-cheek. As a 76-year-old, I have experienced none of the sensations you mentioned. If HiNi should take me (not for a minute do I believe there will be a pandemic), it would only move up the date for the next stage of my growth.

As for being the butt of jokes, should we really care what a forty-year old thinks about anything?

Idea number One: Films should be reviewed by someone under fifty and someone over fifty. It adds a great deal to our lives to have a perspective of fifty or more years. People of age enjoy a bigger picture of life.

We have seen fashions come and go, and come and go again. We can sit back and laugh at the "latest" fad, knowing it is just another re-hash of a re-hash. But to youngsters, it's all new. They lack perspective.

Idea Number Two: Every time a "new" fashion emerges from unimaginative designers, newspapers should show where that new-old idea came from. But that might be against the newspaper's financial interest.

Idea Number Three: Youngsters to read and study until about age forty, forty-five. Then think about what they have read for ten years or so. In their fifties, they may deign to express an opinion, but only tentatively. Serious communication must await sixty, more or less. (Some exceptions permitted.)

If a woman is worried about "crepey cleavage and saggy booty," it's only because she worried about similar non-essentials when she was young. It's a question of confidence.

Idea Number Four: Run out of town those "anti-aging" establishments. They are anti-reality, anti-life, preying on one's insecurity.

Idea Number Five: The size of an issue of a newspaper be determined by the amount of real news, not by the amount of created stories or advertising sold.