Before I retired (the second time), I made a comment about getting old in the office one day, and a faculty member responded with sympathy of the I-can-relate variety. Maggie (I’ll call her), was in her fifties—a mere child—but she was one of those people on the faculty of every English Department who sees each tiny bit of cultural flotsam as an opportunity to start a study group, assemble an anthology—whatever can be done via publication to garner a grant and/or approbative attention.

As far as I know, Maggie never had a single interesting thought or experience of her own; indeed, I’m not sure she ever had a life of her own. She reminded me of something I once read about Tennyson: After he was made poet laureate, he went around at social functions asking people for ideas on something to write about. (I could never thereafter read Tennyson again.) Maggie’s role on the faculty was to make tenure-tracking hay out of other people’s lives and thoughts. That was her gift. I think her birth certificate must have had the word “Editor” following her name. A couple of examples: the collected coming-home memories of local surviving veterans of WWII, a collection of heated exchanges between fans of rap versus fans of hip-hop—important stuff like that. (She got an NEH grant for the music thing.)

So it wasn’t surprising that my “getting old” comment gave Maggie an idea. She thought it would be interesting to collect aging people’s thoughts on getting old. I don’t know whether she ever did it or not—I retired after that spring semester—but I rather doubt it. All the getting-old thoughts and experiences, especially of the dirty-joke type, have been done to death as email jokes forwarded around the world a few hundred times already. I’m getting a few in my mailbox now that I first saw years ago. Heaven knows where they’ve been.

I’m no longer getting old; I’ve got it now. And one of the things I’ve done about it is give myself permission to be as Any Rooney crotchety as I want to be. I have permission. I am old. And my first crotchety objection is to the old jokes about old people, especially the dirty ones. Here’s a news bit for the younger set: We’re not obsessed with sex—you are. We’ve been there, done that, and the tee-shirt got lost in the dryer years ago. (And, surprise—we don’t miss it. It didn’t turn out to be The Most Important Thing in Life, after all.) The second objection is to the jokes about memory: We have a lot more to remember than you do. If one memory file drawer is created per decade, we have dozens more file drawers to search than you have. So, get real. And I might add, by the way, that the most recent files are not necessarily the important ones for us, as they are for you. The third objection is the assumption younger people have that aging causes intellectual degeneration. Not really. It’s just that we don’t believe computer skills are a measure of intellectual prowess. If that’s a surprising point of view, you can chalk it up to my age, if you like. I don’t mind.

I don’t mind a lot of things now, actually. And one of the things I don’t mind is being old. The view is different where I am now; and here’s another possibly surprising statement: The view is better in the ways that really matter, the ways you always suspected really mattered but didn’t know for sure. You can be sure. It’s really true. But one thing you know when you’re old is that experience is not the best teacher. It’s the only one.