After much thought and market research, we here at mennonnosapiens.com have decided to launch a new feature we hope to bring you daily (or at least semi-daily) called "What I Learned Today."  Seeing as it's true that, as they say, you learn something new every day, we figure why not pass it along?

We'll be bringing you one thing we learned, and, in the spirit of my Buddhist-ish friend, R., who says that you should look at whomever you are with at the moment as your teacher, we'll not only share our daily (or semi-daily) pearls of wisdom with you, but we'll share our sources as well. 

So, without further ado, let's do it!

Today, I learned that 65 is "middle aged,"  which will be unwelcome news to all those with "senior discounts," I can assure you. 

I learned this from sixty-something critic David Denby*'s review of the new Indiana Jones movie in this week's New Yorker, where he describes Sean Connery at 59 as having "relaxed beautifully into middle age," and Harrison Ford at 65 as middle aged, but not relaxedly so. Instead "He’s tense and glaring, and he speaks his lines with more emphasis than is necessary, like a drunk who wants to appear sober." 

Finally, Denby laments: "The movie leaves a faint aura of depression, because you don’t want to think of daring as the exclusive property of youth. There must be a way for middle-aged men to take chances and leap over chasms, but repeating themselves with less conviction isn’t it."

Denby's own repeated insistence that 65 is middle-aged leaves no doubt that the critic, who is in his mid-sixties as well, firmly believes that people live to be over 130 years old.  Unfortunately, the figure is currently closer to 75.  Which leads me to wonder: if 65 is middle-aged and 75 is dead, when is old?  Never, of course.  We don't get old.  We get middle-aged and then we die, long, long before our time, sometimes 65 or 70 years prematurely.  It's tragic.

No, the truth is, I'm all for Boomers redefining everything to suit them, including middle age, especially when it means I'll be younger longer.
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*Not to be confused with David Denby, the Irish Professor of French, who, according to his wikipedia bio "has also written a number of articles m [sic] conference proceedings, and book chapters." And has, additionally, "no loving soul."