In Continuum.

I haven't got anything against old people, in fact I think some of them are pretty nice to be honest. I like nice friendly old people, or just nice friendly people in general. They make you feel good, and at the same time you make others feel good because you are feeling good. It's the simple concept of paying it forward, you know, from one person to the next. But there is something about cheerful old people that is so endearing, I suppose, and maybe it is because of all our fears in growing old to look just like them. Some people trend to prevent it like a plague of some kind, because they don't want to lose their youthful self to the sands of time. Either way, it is nice to know that someone old is having such a positive outlook on things, even if he or she really isn't all that optimistic at all. And you know how old people are, with their loose skin and wrinkles carved deep into their faces. The way those wrinkles fold up almost always make them look ten times happier when they are smiling, for some reason. And that is a good thing, really, for the most part, because it somehow makes you feel happy as well. It's true, try to tell an old person something funny right now and see what happens to the edge of your lips when he or she starts to laugh. 

So yes, I've known a couple of old people in my life, and I am perfectly OK with calling them "old people". There isn't anything wrong with the term "old", now is there? The society keeps coming up with new ways to describe these people, as if calling them "old" is some kind of insult to their ancestors or something. You've heard it before, the way they call them "aged citizens" or "the elderly", or "people in their sunset years". No, they are old people, and there isn't anything wrong with being called old people. So, I've known a couple of old people in my life, but I've never actually had any intimate conversations with them ever before. It is sad, I do admit, but geography really does come in the way of things, especially when you are living so far away from one another. I've always wondered how it is like, that transition between "Wow I am getting older" to "Damn, I am old". Nobody really likes to grow old, but we all kind of do, it's the way our body works. Getting old is a part of being young, you have to experience it sooner or later, though I am sure everybody would probably wish for old age to come first before anything else. I mean, wouldn't it be nice to get old age out of the way first, knowing that your prime is just around the corner after that? 

Being old is fine, but being old and creepy is another thing altogether. Thankfully, my grandparents were all very nice and friendly people, as far as I remember them. My grandfather on my father's side had difficulty hearing, so we never actually talked very much. Besides, he never spoke a word of mandarin, so it made communication between us even more difficult. My grandmother on my father's side is still alive, as I have mentioned, and she is a jolly old woman, though finding walking just a tad more tiresome than she'd like it to be. She still fights with my father, physically, and still racks in money whenever someone decides to gamble in her house over mahjong - whoever that wins has to spare her a certain percentage of money. My grandmother on my mother's side was also a jolly old lady, always stacking her fridge up with soft drinks when the children went over for a visit, and she was always laughing and smiling when we saw her. My grandfather on my mother's side, though, wasn't very friendly. I don't remember anything about him more than the way he laid there, dead. But I have heard of horror stories of my grandfather, and he surely wasn't a very nice old man to deal with. My mother often calls him the "dictator" of the house, and I suppose that is an under-statement by itself, especially when you tie your own son up and then whip him with your belt. 

So yes, old people, I am fine with them. But there are times when they just scare the living daylight out of you, don't they? I think it is rare for people to age gracefully, to look good even when they are old, and sometimes better when they are older. Like Sean Connery, or Paul Newman, for example. They looked good when they were younger, and equally good when they were old! Then there are some old people who just look like old people, and there isn't a problem with that. They just look older, wiser, and they move slower and things like that - normal. Then there are those old people that look really scary, have you ever seen one of these people? Their hair are always messy, sometimes dyed in a strange color, and they almost always have an odd eye and missing teeth. It is not really their fault to be that way at times, but you just start to wonder what it'd be like if you end up like that. It'd be a scary thought, to know that you could end up like one of them in the future, scaring away little children only because you look like a witch from the fables. I've seen those people around the neighborhood before, and they do scare me a little bit when they are near you. It is made worse if they have bad attitude, like squeezing up onto buses and pushing their ways through. 

I think growing old can be a beautiful thing, you know, even when you aren't looking your best any longer. Like, with all the experiences that you have gathered over the years, you'd have more stories than anybody to tell about your life, and I think that is a great thing to have. To be able to share experiences, to tell people about things that they've never been through before, it is quite enjoyable I'd say. To be wise, I think that is one of the few incentives of getting old, but a lot of people don't see that at all. So many of us are battling the "problem" of aging, and seeing it as some kind a disease with a cure. It's strange, somehow, to think that just a hundred years ago, humans were never expected to live past the age of fifty. Nowadays, we are talking about an average of seventy, even eighty years old. That's twenty or thirty years older than a century ago, and who knows how old we'd be in another half a century. People are living longer because we want to battle old age, because getting old is just such a scary thing to so many people. That is why they have the cosmetics and the make-ups, the plastic surgeries and the botox. Some people do it to maintain their beauty, while others do it to try to get their beauty back. But you know how the latter usually ends up with - a face full of surgical failures. 

Nobody really wants to become a part of those "old people", but then it really is a part of everything. The most we could hope for is to probably hope that we won't end up like those creepy old people that'd emerge out of an elevator and scare little children, like the ones that have scared me on numerous occasions. Not all of us could age gracefully, so I suppose we could always wish to age normally. You know, wrinkles and lines are fine on our faces, but just don't give us diseases that make us wheelchair-bound, or that we have to carry a bag of our urine around. We can hope for such things, and we do our best in life to avoid them. But it is really your perspective at the end of the day. It's about how you are going to see yourself when you are old, because it makes a great difference as to whether or not others see you as being old and wise, or old and senile.