I do not like to be called elderly.
Okay.
Today, I showed my class The Trip to Bountiful, a movie about an older widow
who wants to return to her home town. It is set in the last 40s, as far as i
can judge. Geraldine Page plays the widow, and the movie appeared in 1985.
Page is probably over 60 in the movie, but not much, I'm guessing. Her main
problem is 'being too old' to go back home, although she can clean her son and
daughter-in-law's apartment, make beds, etc.
I was struck by one scene particularly. Page and someone whom I probably ought
to know, a young woman probably 20, are standing together in a small town
street about 10:00 at night, seen from a bit of a distance. Had you not seen
them before, you would not know that one was young and the other old--there
would be no visual clues.
What I think that means is that we are doing aging differently today, doing
'age' differently, maybe. The two women were dressed alike, which would happen
today, too, but the style they both wore was 'matron,' since the young woman
was married. Bodies were not well defined, so there were no clues from that.
although they wore relatively short sleeves and skirts, those did not give
clues from even a slight distance. A married woman in the 40s was pretty old,
no matter what her age--or so it seemed to me.
I don't know if this helps with Simmel or not. I want to add, though, from the
perspective of 54 years, that while adventure is relative, and what may be an
adventure to me could be routine to you, etc., as we increase the number of
experiences and adventures we have in our biographies, there may be fewer
things that we have not done. "Benn there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt."
Donna Darden.