Today . . . I Was Offered My First Senior Discount!

Today, at the age of 55, I was, for the first time, offered a Senior Discount. It was some youngster at the front desk at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum.

"Are you a member?" she asked as I proposed to purchase a ticket.

No," I replied.

"Cal employee or student?" she continued.

"I'm nobody," I said.

"Senior discount?" she offered.



I chuckled and asked, "What age should I have reached to qualify for the senior discount?"

"65," she said, looking right at me.

Amused, I smiled and asked, "What made you think I'm in the senior discount category?"

"Oh, we'd just take your word for it," she kindly offered.

She was charming, so, no, I didn't respond with, "Just take my WORD for it? What is about what you see here that would make you BELIEVE I'm 65 . . . or OLDER?!!!!!?"


The museum was $8 for non-seniors. $6.50 for seniors. Not being good with money, I didn't see my opportunity at the time. Nor did I reflect upon the fact that this was a milestone event in my life: my first offer of a senior discount.

I just said, "I've a ways to go to hit 65, but from your perpective it must be like looking at the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building from the sidewalk between them. Hard to tell which is taller."

"Yeah, I can't tell," she laughed, still looking right at me. In this moment, she was merely acknowledging what she must have considered our shared plight: the inability to make a distinction between 55 and 65. She wasn't being rude because she's not only unable to make a physiological distinction; she's not capable of discerning an emotional distinction between 55 and 65 either. From her perspective, if you're 55 . . . you might as well just be 65, 75, dead. It's all one big undifferentiated horror.

She gave me a ticket. I reached and took it without difficulty. One day, my hand will tremble a bit.


It was much later that I noted the milestone, but I also noted that it shouldn't surprise me. I was dressed in 3 shirts, a jacket, jeans, and a hat because it was cold outside. Or was it? I had noticed in the morning so many young people around Cal wearing far less clothing, sitting outside, riding bikes, and I had asked myself: "Is it cold, objectively, so that most humans would regard it as cold, or am I cold because I'm getting old? Do I have less energy to fight off the elements?"

Now, if I'm asking myself that question, then . . . .

Gotta keep a sense of humor about this aging thing.

Does being a curmudgeon, to the extent that I am, have an effect upon my face so that it makes me look older than I am. (What's the word for psychological conditions which slowly change the facial affect?)