Suddenly people are approaching me [View all]
with "Do you need help, darling?" in the grocery store. Something about my appearance or demeanor has changed, all of a sudden, to make me look/seem more decrepit than I am, and I want to know what it is.
I am a 77-year-old woman, I walk with a cane when I'm out of my house (but not in the store--the cart is my walker!). I have tremors (maybe they have suddenly worsened; I can't tell). Until the other day, I had a plastic brace on my right wrist (elective surgery), but the remarks have continued since the brace was removed.
The manicurist asked me if I drove. I said yes, and I asked her if that made her feel less safe on the road, and she just smiled. Then she asked me if I cook, for glob's sake, and I said yes, that in fact some of the junk under my fingernails was pie dough from the tomato galette I had made that morning. She wanted to know if I lived alone (I don't; my husband and I have been married 53 years or something)--in short, she telegraphed pretty clearly that I was too old to be out on my own.
My doctor assures me I have all my marbles (whew), so I'm not imagining this. Has anybody else experienced this kind of thing, where all of a sudden people treat you like you're really, really old and feeble? I mean, I am really old--not really, *really* old, but old--but why now are people starting to point this out to me?
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