What's surprised you about getting older?

[Bucky]

I'm 49. I'm surprised how much I like country music. Not the new stuff. That's prepackaged pablum. But the real country music from the 50s and 60s and was fresh off the farm and not far off from the blues and knew the real pain of working the land and living in poverty in the richest country in the world.

I used to sneer, but these days I just love that stuff. For instance...

or if you want something with a little more kick

[liberal N proud]

1. I still like Rock N Roll

At 54!

[onehandle]

2. With a few exceptions, Country Music died sometime in the 70s.

The 40s, 50s, and 60s were the golden ages for sure.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Somewhere in the past decade or so, I stopped being even slightly hip

Even like 15 years ago, I was familiar with the current music scene via my daughters. Then they went to college, came home, went to college, came home, moved out, moved in, etc etc and all of a sudden I have no clue about the latest songs or performers.

And you know what? I couldn't care less.

[triguy46]

4. How quickly your body can betray you.

[SCantiGOP]

21. As Willie Nelson said when asked that question

on the occasion of his 70th birthday, "I never thought I'd outlive my dick." But he later said how glad he was that we now had those little blue pills.

[triguy46]

40. He said what I was thinking. n/t

[Adsos Letter]

43. Amen to that!

When I used to do projects around the house I was always like "OK, gotta get this, gotta nail that, gonna do y after I do x," etc.

Now it's all "Crap...I gotta get down on my hands and knees if I wanna fix that baseboard," followed by about 10 minutes of pondering...

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. back in the 50's, lots of radio stations played country

right along with "not country"..there were no hard and fast formats then.
So those wonderful old songs ( which I love too) are part of our memories.
I have a LOT of that music now, and play it often.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. I grew up listening to Hank Williams

When my American dad brought my French mom to the United States to live in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and then Texas, she became a big fan of Hank Williams. I don't consider Hank strictly a country artist, at least not like those of today. He played blues and folk and he's more accessible than other country artists although I also find that I can listen to country from that period whereas the modern stuff sometimes makes my skin crawl as it doesn't have that authentic sound of the simple people like it used to have.

As far as what surprises me the most while I grow old (I'm 63) is that I still feel like I'm 12 until I look in the mirror.

Here's probably my mom's favorite Hank Williams tune.

[Generic Brad]

7. That there are benefits to getting older

I may be older, slower, and less attractive. But in exchange, I am more effective, more energetic, and more optimistic about my ability to make a positive difference in this world.

[madinmaryland]

8. I have come to enjoy classical music. None of the corporate bullshit

of pop music.

[NV Whino]

9. That I'm not immortal

[Adsos Letter]

44. Indeed.

The knowledge that I am really going to die some day in the not-too-distant future has become a signal reality.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. I don't particularly like country music

but some of the stuff from the '60s is pretty nostalgic because I remember hearing it at friends' houses, or on the radio, or on either the Porter Waggoner Show or the Roy Clark/Buck Owens Show. My favorite song was "Ode to the Little Brown Shack Out Back"

[RebelOne]

18. I never cared for country music.

The only decent singer of country music was Johnny Cash.

[Arugula Latte]

23. I grew up listening to country music (had a parent in the radio biz)

and, even though I was pretty open minded at first, the more I heard of it, the more I despised it. I agree that Johnny Cash is one of few decent ones. I like that guy a lot, and he had talent and integrity.

Willie Nelson might be another one, although I can't say I ever really actually listen to him.

One thing that has surprised me is that as I've gotten older (I'm late 40s) I've grown to like more harder-edged rock than I did the first time around. Some grunge stuff that I wasn't fond of in the 90s is suddenly appealing to me. Go figure.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

11. That I like it, and I'm going to be 65 on Monday.

[Loryn]

36. Happy Birthday!

[Sekhmets Daughter]

39. Thank You!

[nickinSTL]

12. I'm kind of surprised at...

the fact that I don't feel any older.

Ok, yeah, my back muscles have seized up a couple times in the past couple years, & my left knee now hurts...well, almost anytime I do anything really active...

But overall, I don't feel much different. Might be a little naive of me, but I kind of expected to.

I'm hoping that my new-found enjoyment of going to the gym regularly will keep me feeling this good for years to come.
(and hoping that taking off some of this excess weight will take the pressure off the knee & maybe put off a knee replacement a bit longer)


Ok, I'm only 40, but still...



And on the subject of music, I've recently found that I consider the vast majority of pop music on the radio now to be trash. I don't remember feeling that way even 10 years ago. I'm still keeping up somewhat on what's new, but aside from a very few artists, I don't see the point.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

13. I dislike country music as much as I ever did,

but what has changed about getting older is that I no longer give much of a crap about things that used to seem very important.

[union_maid]

14. That it happened so fast for one thing

Seems like one day mr. union_made and I were moaning about turning 30 and the next our younger child is in his mid-30's. Doesn't seem like there was a lot of time at all between those two events. The other thing is how life never does settle down. When I was young I assumed that married, middle-aged people had mostly settled kinds of lives, unless there was some catastrophic event. What I've found is that change never stops and all of life is just a transitional phase we're going through.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

15. I thought...

...music could get better or even remain as good for long. It has.

My friends also said that my taste in music would mellow. I'm waiting on that still.

[Gorp]

16. Really long lower back hairs. As for country music, it died when Ricky Scaggs hit the scene.

[In_The_Wind]

17. That I made it this far without strangling the crap outta someone!

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL] Oh and, I really want to go out for another long ride . . .

and love those songs you've added today.

[Duer 157099]

19. All the new people I meet every day

[fizzgig]

20. that i stopped giving a shit what other people thought of me

that said, i'm still in my early 30s and know full well i'm still a baby

[Mopar151]

22. I can't hurt a buffet table anymore

I'm a big galoot, and I used to be able to seriously hurt an "all you can eat" deal. These days, I can barely finish a Taco Hell meal deal.

[Populist_Prole]

24. That mind-wise, I don't really feel any different, and my tastes evolved to include new things

Yet I still pretty much like the stuff I did when I was younger, mostly as it applies to music. Of course at 51 my body is showing its limitations ( spurious aches, the need for reading glasses etc ) but I'm glad I resolved to and began to take better care of myself in my early 40's ( eating right, losing weight...and keeping it off ) and I'm now in much better shape than many of my peers and friends who just basically threw in the towel, let themselves go and basically blamed it on "getting old". After recently suffering a herniated spinal disc after some unwise lifting, I now have trained myself out of necessity to be much more deliberate in my actions as I still have another 15 years of manual labor to go before I can retire. In this manner, fear is a good motivator not to do anything stupid.

[locks]

25. Mostly

that I actually did get old!

[A HERETIC I AM]

26. That I can and will call a cop "son". N/T

[LeftInTX]

27. Female facial hair growth that appears at menopause

No one told me about this. No one!

Unlike the hair on my head, this stuff just keeps growing and growing.

I never guessed that one day I would be a "bearded lady".

[DFW]

28. Mostly how my mind hasn't caught up with my physical age.

I still live and dream like I did thirty years ago (turned 60 last year). It totally freaks me out that I now have a daughter that's as old as I was when I got married. And yet in the meantime, I've had the physical ailments that I thought (30 years ago) only OLD people got. 30 year old people look at me and see a REALLY OLD DUDE. I look at 30 year old people and have to remind myself they are no longer my contemporaries.

Other than that, I work hard, play soft (when I can play at all), and am pretty much OK with things as long as I have my wife and my guitars.

Estelle Ramey once said: "I have loved. I have been loved. Everything else is background music." I think she got it exactly right.

[slackmaster]

29. Odd, perplexing things that younger people say

Such as calling me "sir" and speaking in current youth vernacular, of which my comprehension is lacking.

[In_The_Wind]

33. interesting

[img][/img]

[SwissTony]

30. Becoming a dirty old man.

Well, not quite. I was driving along in the town where I live and saw my 20 year old daughter walking. I pulled over to offer her a lift and a young man yelled out "Don't do it. He's just a dirty old man". My daughter said "It's my Dad", but then I knew I was getting old. Kudos to the young man, though.

As some have stated, my musical taste has broadened. I like classical music a heckuva lot more than I did when I was a teen. I hadn't been much exposed to it before. My Latin teacher in HS did me a great favour by devoting one lesson to playing Carmina Burana to us (it's got latin text in it). My tastes further broadened to include opera and Tom Waits.

But no real surprises. I knew I wasn't going to be 25 forever. Just wish I had the wisdom (?) I have now way back then (but don't we all).

[CanSocDem]

31. Forty years ago, I wanted to change EVERYTHING.

Nowadays, even the suggestion to "change" makes me nervous.

.

[Bucky]

32. I won't talk to you about your socks.

But in your heart, you know what's the right thing to do.

[Moondog]

34. Funerals.

There are so many of them.

It used to be weddings. Then it was christenings, or "I just got divorced" parties.

Now it is funerals. I recently got back from another one at Arlington. I have so many friends buried there that I just hate thinking about it.

And it occurred to me, on the way home from the last one, that at this rate there won't be anybody left to attend mine, when my time comes. And then I thought, well, hell, just take me out to sea, kick my corpse over the side with the noon garbage, play a CD of "Nearer My God To Thee" and be done with it.

[Bucky]

35. Well, hell, Moondog. Stipulate an announcement in DU in your will. We'll all come.

Frankly, I think a DU funeral might be the way for me to clear on out of this coil. I'm calling my lawyer tonight.

[Moondog]

37. Heh. Great idea.

[blue neen]

38. Those dreams about missing class in college.

It's the end of the semester, time to take the final, and somehow I had never gone to the class.

Or...it's time to take the final, and I can't find the classroom.

Or...I need one more credit in order to graduate.

None of these things ever really occurred...never skipped classes and graduated on time.

Why would one have these dreams 35 years later?

[snot]

46. Because you're worried about the FINAL final?

[MiddleFingerMom]

41. !!!

.
.
.
1. The unbelievable number of hot, young, extremely wealthy young women who find me irresistible. It might
be much easier to count the ones who don't.
.
.
.
2. How much more honest I become as I age.
.
.
.

.
.
.
(To tell you the truth, #1 might be helped by the fact that I'm the ONLY American driving a Hummer with a
coupla assault weapons in the gunrack who has an enormous penis (see #2).
.
.
.

[Brigid]

42. I've gotten kind of squeamish in my old age.

I'm 54, and last semester I took an anatomy class. One day in lab we saw a cadaver. I dropped the class the next day. I was changing my major anyway, and that was just the last straw. I didn't used to be that way.

[Blue_In_AK]

45. That it's not as bad as I thought it would be.

I'm 66, but I feel like I'm about 30. Being retired is awesome.