I didn’t like Rabbit, Run, but this sentence has been bouncing around my head lately:
He wants to tell them there’s nothing to getting old, it takes nothing.Of course, the same is true about being young. Even though I’m old enough to rent a car at a discounted rate, practically every time I see my grandmother, she touches my face and says enviously, “so young!” Like I had anything to do with it. But she has a point: in thirty years, I’ll probably be using expensive lotions to keep some semblance of youth, while now I can barely remember to put on suntan lotion. Aging is one of those existential disappointments – I know I won’t look as good at 80 as I did at 8. But there are small rewards to sticking around past the young and beautiful years. The other day, I saw a gaggle of wrinkleless teenagers get on the subway, and I was happy I wasn’t with them.