Elderly?

I was reading this morning about the State of the Union address last night and the Republican response. I watched the speech last night and refused to watch the Republican response. Nothing against their response I just had a problem with the delivery person. Brand new senator from Iowa. She hasn't been around Washington long enough in my opinion to be qualified to give a response. The whole mess was going to be my blog post today BUT, it's not. I always say that nothing good is said after a but in a sentence. This may be an exception. I'm just tired of politics and bullshit at the moment. So I want to talk about something else.

One of the things I was reading referred to the elderly as a group. It got me wondering. Who are the elderly? What is the definition? I'm almost 61 years old. Do I qualify as elderly? Most places now give me a "senior citizen discount". I didn't pay much attention but last time we went to Kroger they gave me the discount and saved me a few dollars. I didn't know they had one. The clerk didn't ask. Apparently I appear old enough to get a "senior citizen discount" without even asking. Does that qualify me as "elderly"? It appears to be one of those amorphous terms. It seems to matter where you stand on the timeline. When you are 20 years old elderly may appear to be anyone over the age of 45. As you approach 45 it seems less elderly and more akin to "middle age". Since I cannot picture living to 90 I think middle age hit me a bit earlier. Then one really cannot know middle age until they are dead. It can clearly be defined then but seems at that point to be useless information. So back to elderly now that we have worked through middle age. At 45 years old 65 or so seems like a good point to define elderly. It might be useful to nail it down to full retirement social security age. Since that definition is in the process of changing we could reasonably argue somewhere between 65 and 67 years of age. Of course, if you draw social security early, it could be as young as 62. Yet even now as I look at the obituary column every morning in the Galesburg newspaper (my first stop after reading Mike's blog existinginbfe.BlogSpot.com) someone dying in their 60's seems to have been robbed of a few years. My Dad died at age 70 and had he not smoked would likely be active and with us today. Mom is still around and being a gentleman I will not reveal her age. Is she elderly? Well depending on where you stand on the timeline, most likely she is. I won't define her that way. She's Mom and she gets to be whatever she wants. If she wants to call herself elderly she can. I won't. So it would seem the answer is apparent to me. If my Mom isn't elderly, and I'm younger, then there is no possible way I can be. Good news for me. Almost 61 years old and still a kid. Well, at least to one wonderful lady back in Illinois. Since elderly isn't clearly defined anywhere you get to make it whatever you want. Maybe it's an attitude rather than an age. You get to be elderly when you act elderly. I think maybe I have a ways to go on that way of looking at the subject.