What is it that makes YOU feel that you have reached old age?

When I had just passed my driving test and was all long blonde hair and lipstick.... as soon as I got to a junction in my Mini, a nice gentleman would smile and let me go first.... now I appear to be absolutely invisible. Which is odd, since I'm a lot bigger and you would think, easier to spot !

All yummy mummies wear jamas now practically all day and slippers, seen them at the school gates and in supermarkets, so that doesn't count I'm afraid. Leisure wear is in fashion wise so we are OK with big pants and trackies..........Big pants are fine (seen Bridget Jones).....music in shops ? I thought that was my tinnitus.

People used to call me darling and sweet heart and want to help me, that was when I was skinny and blonde.then they started to call me mum and aunty then nannie, then back to sweet heart so no change there really.........

What I am not so keen on is the invisibility or it all, no one seems to see me anymore because all the people I knew and loved are either dead or moved away.

I have always used slippers in the house, and on Monday I will be 75, and I stil dont feel old!

When kind people ask if I need help with my case, getting off a train, I always accept.
Went to a lecture yesterday and one of the age obsessions was getting remarks like getting old, the reply which I am now going to use in future, is "I am not old, just lived a long time"

It was reaching my 70th that did it. None of the other decades bothered me at all, but when I got to 70 I felt I had crossed a threshold and things were getting serious!

When I opened the door to a little girl and her mum on Halloween and discovered that I taught the mum at playgroup when she was a toddler.

I guess when you stop being able to do the things that bring you great pleasure. PS I haven't got to that stage yet!

I didn't need to read much of the starter post, because it id the being on a bus that makes me feel old. Yes, I used to use buses in my teens, but then there was a very long period of avoiding them until that tell tale bus pass arrived. As for slippers, I hate warm ones, and also hate to go barefoot in the house, so clog-style sandals fit the bill all year round

Watching where I put my feet when out walking. Until a recent fall I would stride out fearlessly, now suddenly I'm aware how many leaves have fallen on the pavements and how slippy they look.

Needing to see the news and weather!

I am older now than any of my parents or grandparents generation but am not yet out of my sixties! Seems so sad that they all died so relatively young - and I am hoping to do much better!
I try not to sit to get dressed but it is becoming an increasingly close run thing! DH thinks it is amusing to ponder how it would appear on my death certificate.

Children certainly have always had a knack of making you feel older than your years.
I have been feeling very old for a very long time ever since DD, at 6 years old, asked me what it was like in the olden days.
I thought at that time that I was clearly feeling how my own mother felt when I had asked her at a similar age what it was like in the dark ages. In my defence I have to say that at that time I was under the impression that the dark ages was before the advent of electric lighting. Clearly I was also under the impression that being in her early thirties was a truly venerable age.
It was certainly a bit of reverse déjà vu when DD confessed not long ago that it wasn't until she was in university that she realised that electricity had been around longer than she thought because she had clearly remembered having her night time bath by candlelight. This must have been during the electricity cuts of the three day week when the electricity was regularly turned off due to lack of fuel. She says she now feels very much younger!

76 now and have lived longer than either parent. I feel old when I look in the mirror first thing in the morning and see my grandmother who lived to 91.

I come from a short-lived family. Both parents and all 4 grandparents died fairly young and out of 4 siblings I'm the only one without serious life-limiting conditions. We are between 65 and 72 so not ancient.
I'm just lucky that I can look forward to being 100 and really don't feel old but I'm sure that, to my grandchildren, I'm a wrinkled old wreck.

The other week I was clearing out the cupboard under the bathroom washbasin. I came across a make up mirror I used to use years ago - a magnifying one. Need I say more? It hit the rubbish bin faster than the speed of light.

(On a positive note I was so chuffed that I managed to run a half a mile two weeks after my total knee replacement, when I had given up running a decade earlier). <<totally misses point of thread...>>

whitewave said <Well not sure as I'm only 70 so haven't reached it yet. Mum is 98 and has reached it. I suppose if you asked her she would say increasing physical frailness, is a bugger at times.
Apart from that still feel much the same as I've ever done except I can't run any more and my knees have list their spring. I do sit to put on my tights though hmm >

I read this and thought I could have posted it. Same age, mother at same age. I moved last summer into a bungalow with the walk-in shower etc. Mum has just given up her flat and moved into a care home.
I'm not old but it is all downhill from here on

My son was doing a project on the war and asked where I went when I was evacuated.
I wasn't born till 1948.

When my DS was about 8 we were talking one day about the Titanic sinking. He asked if I remembered it happening He didn't seem able to grasp how long ago it was, so I told him it was before his Grandma was born. Crikey, he said, that is VERY old. She would have been about 56

Whitewave, I think you feel as I do. At 76 I'm definitely not elderly. I do actually stand without holding on to put my knickers on, and I still intersperse showers with baths. I'm battling with knee replacement postponement by daily exercises and glucosamine. My mind is still young, though increasingly forgetful. The usual things - pressing car keys to open front door, putting them down somewhere, then not finding them, relating something to DDs only to be met with "you've already told me that" and so on. But on the whole to me the elderly are people who are older than me, and quite a bit older. Yes I realised I couldn't run when GCs have asked me to race, or even chase, them.
JackyB I still have some silver threepenny bits from childhood Xmas pudds, and a couple of the larger ones with edges. Alas I don't have too much of the Cockney rhyming slang variety but that also means I don't have a job finding bras!

Being asked by a (younger) friend if I needed help when I grunted and fell back on my chair. Well we had been sat talking for ages and my knees had locked ...

Realising I didn't have to run for a bus or tube as, living in London, there is always another one within minutes ...

Realising my contemporaries The Rolling Stones are in their 70s ...

Wearing a woolly hat to keep my ears warm in winter and not caring what I look like ...

Thanks for starting this thread Shanma and I loved your Asda bra story

Well not sure as I'm only 70 so haven't reached it yet. Mum is 98 and has reached it. I suppose if you asked her she would say increasing physical frailness, is a bugger at times.

We are actually old age proofing our house in the hope we get there! So it's eye level ovens and fridge. Eventually walk in shower and perhaps a hard stand at the back of our garden as it will be easier to get to the car etc when we are ancient.

Apart from that still feel much the same as I've ever done except I can't run any more and my knees have list their spring. I do sit to put on my tights though

Realising that people who are in charge of things at work (including me as on of the "things") never had to think in pounds shillings and pence and have probably never even seen or touched a thrupenny bit.

For me it is the shift from taking care of others to be taken care off. Up until a short while ago, I was caring for GKids, elderly parents, elderly neighbour. Now I am on the receiving end, my children doing things for me that I can't manage. Not just my kids but complete strangers who rush to help when I am travelling.

The biggest sign though is my garden. I love it and although it is tiny, it has so many plants all very tall an vigourous. In August I suddenly made a decision that I could not cope with it any more. The landscaper, starts work next month, to radically change it to low maintenance.

I guess all changes in life bring a mixture of happiness and sadness. I am trying to be positive and see this stage of my life as a new beginning, with new opportunities.

Making grunting noises when getting up or getting in or out of car, just like my mum.

Seeing people walking round with coffee cups with lids in the street and especially in supermarkets, we were never allowed to eat or drink in the street. Also schoolchildren eating rubbish on the way to school, is that their breakfast?

Having a four-year old grandson who always generously excuses me from doing something I say I can't do – even something I have never been able to do throughout my entire life, such as crochet or drive a car – with the explanation, "That's because you're very old Granna". Otherwise, I don't feel that I have reached old age and am always a bit surprised when I remember that I am in my sixties.

I don't feel particularly old esp as my own mother is still very much alive and kicking at 89 years of age!

I did read recently that you know you've reached old age when you sit down to put your underwear on, so I persist in teetering about on one leg as I get dressed in the mornings, in the hope it keeps me young.