Some years ago a friend suggested that I make a list (I love lists!) of everything - well, not everything, but a few things - that I have learned since I turned 60. It's a game you can play with yourself at odd times and it also provides some ah-hah moments about some things you never knew you knew, or didn't. I learned the displacement theory of measurement when I was 21, watching my cousin measure the butter for a cake. (People baked cakes from scratch in those days.) I remember learning how to fill a drum-type humidifier (old model), by watching someone pour the water directly onto the drum instead of down the side and wetting everything. But I didn't learn how to fill an ice cube tray until I was post-sixty and watched my daughter tip the tray under the flow of water, letting gravity fill the lower compartments. As far as the metric system is concerned, I am an alien on this planet. I know that 20 is light cardigan weather, and a few palindromes: 82 F is 28 C; 61 F is 16 C, like that. Dealing with kilometres, I simply estimate driving time; a place is not x-number of kliks away, it's 20 minutes' drive, or whatever. Canadian butchers cater to AM (ante-metric) older people by pricing meat at so much per pound and I, for one, am grateful. As for cheese I measure my needs with my hands, arranging my fingers into wedge shapes or widths. These are all methods I have developed since I turned 60. Those of you in my range probably have a new trick or two up your sleeve. Is it too much to hope to learn some from you?
beyond the pale
A new ad for volunteers for a survey on brain health calls for subjects between the ages of 50 and 79, to see how they're getting along. And a couple of insurance ads on TV (no-medical life insurance) limits eligibility to ages 50 to 80. So - I am beyond the pale,that is, unacceptable. I looked it up. I knew the meaning but not the origin. A paling was a fence, from the Latin palls, meaning stake, the kind used in building fences. Fences were built to keep unacceptable people out, or in, as the case may be. I first encountered one in Ireland but pales where common in Europe before the phrase came to define outsiders. So I am past counting or being noticed. Kind of freeing, that. The reason I save coupons is that when one passes its expiry date I can throw it out with a clear conscience. So here I am, past my expiry date, as it were. Beyond the pale. Free at last!