Grandma Ditzler came to call on her grandson, my husband, who was recovering from knee surgery. She was in a snit about Grandpa and his friend, Roger, an old farmer who lived on the hill north of our village. Her voice dripped with disgust when she said, “They were sitting on the front porch watching the young woman across the street doing yard work in her shorts and making remarks to one another. You’d think they were a pair of fifty-year-olds.” The two men were in their eighties.
I laughed to myself because my dad would turn fifty on his next birthday and Mom was teasing him about getting old. If he fell asleep in his chair watching TV in the evening, after a hard day’s work on the farm, he heard, “You better wake up and go bed, old man.” She was only five months behind him so she enjoyed the fun while she could
Now our son and daughter are in their fifties and retired cops. They joked when they were recruited by AARP. Sometimes our adult grandson refers to his father as, “Old Man.”
When I hear him I remind him he’s talking about my baby.
What ages do you consider young and old?