He Knows What He's Doing - Thoughts on Ageism

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 When we were in Maine on vacation, we were walking Dock Square one morning.  There was a geocache we were going to try for a few days earlier but the parking situation wouldn't allow so we skipped it.  We were only a few blocks from it while walking the square so I started heading that direction.  We looked for a few minutes for a magnetic that was supposed to be on the guardrail and I was looking at logs a few feet away from ground zero when an older couple came up to the same spot.  They were looking the same place we were and after not finding it, I said "you looking for it too?"  She said yes and we started chit chatting.  They were about early to mid 70's I'd say. 

They were positive it was there but just in a sneaky container.  You can get things like bolts that are popular for nano's to stick on guardrails to throw people off.  There were a few bolts (full sized) laying on the rocks on this bridge where they had obviously just replaced the one part of the guardrail where the cache had resided.  We knew those weren't it and we sure as hell weren't going to risk it hopping over the rail onto a rocky culvert.  The dude, dressed in decent pants and button up shirt like they'd gone to a nicer restaurant, just hiked his long legs over the guardrail and started walking around on the uneven rocks.  His wife was egging him on telling him to look here or there.  He looked for a good 2-3 minutes as cars and trucks whizzed by us on the road into town completely unfazed.  When they were satisfied it wasn't there, even though we pointed out the shiny new piece of guardrail at ground zero over the faded spots of the rest of the rail several times, they finally relented and we said our goodbyes.

It had been a long time since we saw other cachers in the wild and probably only met one or two people over the 20 years we've done it.  As we were walking around some more, the Mr said he couldn't believe he just hopped the guardrail like that and he'd never do that now, much less at 75ish for him.  I told him my instinct was to gasp and tell him no that we'd already done that because one wrong step and we'd be on a rescue mission toward the water.  We laughed about it and carried on.  I kept going back to that moment for some reason and why it was so jarring seeing someone of that age do that.  Then I thought how upset it makes me when I'm dismissed because of being middle aged but people that age have it so much worse expectation wise.  Who was I to assume because he's older that he couldn't handle that?  It came up again later and I mentioned that thought to the Mr.  That man knows his abilities and he didn't give a second thought to hopping the rail and his wife never said 'be careful' or 'don't fall' or whatever because she knew what her husband's capabilities were too.  

It gave me pause that just because someone's hair is white and their skin is wrinkled doesn't always mean they need to be coddled.  They were clearly in good shape.  I mean, hell,  I hope when I'm that age I can do that without people clutching their pearls but you wouldn't catch me doing that at 48!  I will try to be more aware of treating people older than me as the competent people they are unless they give me reason to believe otherwise.  There was no shaking, being unstable on his feet, a bit of worry from his wife or anything to hint that he wasn't capable of doing what he did other than he was a great grandpa aged man.  Isn't the point these days to age well?  He was clearly doing it!  Yet I was raised with the mentality that great grandparent aged people typically watch golf, play euchre or do other more sedentary activities because their bodies won't let them.  I suspect I'm more sedentary than that guy is  and I've got the aches and stiffness to prove it.  If nothing else, it's given me a bit of a mental kick in the butt to remind myself if I want to prove the stereotypes wrong, the time is now to get out of a crap ass routine that I've been stuck in for far too long.  I want to impress people with my physical abilities at any age, not shrink into a blobbish heap in the corner.

Have you ever caught yourself having protective/cautious thoughts about an older person based on nothing more than their age?

(For more info on how to start geocaching, go to Geocaching.com) 

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