“It’s a shock to grow old, Mr. Russell.” Frederic March as Dr. Alex Fāber in Hombre. Indeed so, Dr. Fāber. Our graying and thinning hair, muscle loss and weight gain, drawn countenance and balking backs shock us all.
We have now reached the final frontier once occupied by our last memory of dearly departed parents who genealogically resided on a generation grade above us. We now are them. The New Old People
Despite a doubled generation gap, New Old People align with college students in terms of freedom. College days serve as a brief duration when the young can opt to do whatever they want, and opt out of what they do not want. We possess similar freedom but differ significantly: College kids lack reserves of cash; New Old People lack reserves of energy.
We breathe that rarified air of freedom though it lacks adequate oxygen to keep us fully energized. That same air seemingly contains a trace of ether that makes us drowsy before bedtime only to dissipate when we close our eyes in earnest.
Certainly, college kids enjoy the better deal despite not knowing it. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: “Youth is the one thing in life worth having.” But as we attest from our own days of yore—“Youth is wasted on the Young”—rings just as true. Combining the two thoughts as syllogisms lead some to conclude that we wasted the one thing in life worth having, or at least squandered much of it.
That precious free time we youthfully took for granted dwindled when the cost of living forced us into the aptly named ‘work force’. Adulthood meant compromise and sometimes doing some things that we did not want to do. We gained money but lost time, which marches inexorably onward until we shockingly morphed into the New Old People.
Those healthy and fortunate possess both money and time at their disposal, much of it expended on transitory joys. Some take to the golf course, where they embark on ‘a good walk spoiled.’ Others travel as a raison d’être. They roll cash into RVs, float savings into cruises or exchange Dollars for Euros. New Old People have never had it so good, nor have they been so ubiquitous. Indeed, we whelm wildlife at national parks, native populations abroad, and islanders at ports of call.
But New Old People inevitably morph into “Old People” who suffer ebbing finances and mounting maladies. The fortunate who reap what they sowed find continuing joy and support in family with mature progeny, and their procreations, the gift of grandchildren whom we watch grow physically and mentally as we engage in rearguard action to slow our decline in the opposite direction. As been said, ‘our dusk is their dawn’. Their dawn brightens the golden hour of our setting sun.
Traveling west in our autumn years on a two-lane highway into the great wide open of the Kansas Plains extends the time to appreciate the orange-streaked twilight skies, and the wonders of life’s cycle. Next Spring, our planted winter wheat grows to amber waves of grain of thee we sing in America the Beautiful.
Old Man Time’s conveyor belt keeps rolling along. How far we ride it depends on an alchemy of unknowable measures of genes, lifestyle and karma. Some of the fortunate—and in some instances, the unfortunate—ride the relentless tide of time to attain the status of Old, Old People with more frequent doctor visits and hospital stayovers, and time alone to contemplate the inevitable. Elders only hope for a soft landing that bypasses assisted living yet discomfited by the thought that fate’s pilot might prove as myopic as their own failing vision.
It has been said that ‘there are no atheists in fox holes’, which perhaps applies equally to Old, Old People who most decidedly face the Great Mystery of Life. The penumbra of the shadow of doubt falls on New Old People, too.
No time like the present for enjoying finite adventures and imparting infinite beneficence by assisting others in need, and making amends for the past. A dear friend who only briefly enjoyed the delights of New Old People status pointedly asked procrastinators about tentative plans of action: “If not now…..when?”
Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau observed: “Time is a but a stream that I go a-fishing in…..I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.”
published: Kansas City Star: 9/23/25
5 replies on “New Old People”
Great article Lou & congratulations on having it published in the Kansas City Star! You still got it!!
When we were young we would sneak out of home to go to parties, new old people sneak out of parties to go home.
Very good piece, very relatable.
Poetry for us. Well written!!
Congratulations, this is great! Such talent. I love the quote, Paul. It always makes me weepy.
Interesting perspective on the passage of time. I suppose that what time gives you. Our sense of self, values and general outlook on the world doesn’t change much but our bodies do. Glad your former home paper had the good judgment to publish your article.