Nancy Kline
AUTHOR

What Do You Do?

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I hesitated before starting this. No one wants to hear more about ageism, I thought 1 (Just proving the need for infinite pieces about ageism.) Old people are unsavoury. Best not to get too close too often. Good to help out now and then, but life is not with old people or for old people or by old people. Come in, say hello, bring soup, leave.

Not this old person. I am here to be reckoned with. I vow not to hesitate again. Read this, I will say, right now, and again. Think about it. Hard. Get it. Act. Ageism, not old people, stinks. Learn the difference. Shout about it. Swing it around and lasso averting eyes with your understanding of it, your outrage.

Now, here is what I want you to know. This is my most recent learning about the putrefaction of respect, i.e., ageism.

First, though, how old is old? You decide. When do you divine revulsion? When do you rationalise exclusion? 60? 65? 70? 80? For sure by 80 old is all you see, what you fear, why you wince, smile, hurry away. Or charitably stay.

So let’s say 80. I was at a party. It was a room full of old people celebrating a slightly younger person. Only slightly. I talked (listened) to one guest and another, even to the (seriously) younger magician who would be doing a “set’ later.

There was the occasional question, mostly versions of, “How do you know her?” The room filled. The conjuring of nods and the turning of one’s ear to the other’s mouth established sufficient links to warrant moving on to the next person.

Soon with knee pain I had to sit, but I didn’t mind. Even in my twenties I had not liked the furtive eyes and superficiality that are all that standing seems to produce. There were three chairs arranged in a crescent of weary expectation. So I sat. Christopher sat next to me.

Eventually a person sat next to him and talked (shouted) about the honouree and the building, which he owned, and the entire history of his life and his ancestors’ lives who had featured in the even more entire history of the vast farm on which all of this celebration was perched.

When we got home, exhausted (mostly from the colossal din), I said to Christopher, “I was disappointed because I had spent three days figuring out how to answer succinctly, really succinctly, the question: ‘And what do you do?’ I had it down to 15 words (which is amazing for a whole career): ‘I am a writer and the director of my teaching company called 'Time To Think.’ I figured that would be intriguing and the person would want to know more.

“But no one did. Not one person ever even asked me what I do,” I said.

I looked at him. He smiled.

“No one ever asks an old person what they do, Nancy."

“Oh,” I said. “Oh. Gosh. Really?

“Really?” I asked.

But instantly I knew it was true. I had never ever for a second thought of that.

Of course they don’t, because old people don’t do anything. They just linger. Until they don’t.

I wish Verdi had been a guest. He would have had a thing or two to say to that question, if anyone had asked him. I would have asked him. And maybe, if he had not gotten too carried away talking about Falstaff and how close he was to finishing it, he would have said to me, “And what do you do?”

And I could have said my 15 words. And I’ll bet you anything he would have said, “Wonderful! What do you write and what is Time to Think?” And we would have been off again, waving away the bubbly and nibbles, and revelling in each other’s oldness, each other’s lives, our living lives, maybe the best of each other’s 80 years. 

1 See: www.nancykline.com/just-thinking-more-new-v  and  www.nancykline.com/just-thinking-more-x

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