An oddity of growing old

[mme_hardy]

I turned sixty this year. I won't say I'm the same person as at (say) thirty-five; I'm bitterer, less hopeful, and of course disabled. But the fun-having part of me is pretty much the same. I get seriously involved in fun things, until the fun wears off or I get anxious about not doing them right. (Ask me about knitting.) Sometimes, when I'm lucky, I do them forever.

The strangest thing about being old is the way some younger people react to my very existence in fandom and gaming spaces. Some are creeped out. Some applaud me for my ... daring originality? If you play Don't Starve Together, yesterday I was called "Our very own Wickerbottom!" (Yes, I am a Wickerbottom main. She's a librarian. Duh.)

I've heard the first gen fanzine writers complain about the very same thing. When a hobby has been active for forty-plus years, dating slash to Leslie Fish, then you're going to have people who are fifty-plus (at least) years old doing it. Home videogaming is also forty-plus years old, and the same applies.

Does anybody remember an SF story called something like "Grandma Won't Rock", about somebody assuming their grandmother ought to be doing grandmotherly things? I feel like that.

Comments

[emceeaich]

Happy birthday.

I find myself, as a GenX'er, in this odd place between the "traditional fanzine" fans who are my seniors by a decade or so and the millennials (many of whom are nearly 40.)

Aside from APAs, I missed zine fandom (and Riot Grrls, more the shame) and I don't identify with media properties the way millenials do.

I don't recall that story, but I should find it.

[mme_hardy]

I'm in a different weird place; I'm a late Boomer, but I never loved Star Trek the way my friends did. I also, at that time and place, thought "why would you be writing fanfiction when you could be doing REAL writing??!?!?!" (Forgive me, I was young and dumb.)

I missed all of fic fandom until Nestra, bless her, lured me into Buffy fic. And then into slash. And then, welp. I was not only a late Boomer but a late bloomer.

[sabotabby]

Happy birthday!

The thing that's best about this generation (loosely speaking late-Boomer to Xillennial) is that people aren't getting boring in their old age anymore. I have one friend who's seventy and we have a bunch of interests in common and go to shows and protests together. Also younger people are all about the knitting and embroidery and stuff so you can do all the cool old lady shit when you're 20 as well. One doesn't need to suddenly go from party mode to boring maturity.

[malkingrey]

It's one of the good things about the internet. You can be a teen or a twentysomething and be heavily into, say, the Andrews Sisters, or a sixty-plus and be equally heavily into Norwegian Death Metal, because it's all out there.

[ironed_orchid]

I love this about being alive now. It's also why I love that post about UX designers needing to imagine an older person using their app, say Margaret Hamilton who sent people to the moon using only 4k of RAM

[sovay]

Happy birthday! Yeah, people don't just . . . go away.

[ironed_orchid]

Belated Happy Birthday!

I just did the math and that means you were about the age I am now when I started following you on LJ, and you're just as interesting and kind now as you were then.

As a C64 kid, I certainly played a lot more video games in the 80s than I do now, but I sort of missed out on the online team playing aspects of it.

[oracne]

Happy Birthday!

[kore]

Aww happy birthday!

LOL, I remember a coworker who was four years younger (and made me feel every bit of it, it was weird) teasing me when I was thirty for being interested in Buffy. "It's a show for teenagers!" At least that kind of thing seems to have died down nowadays.

[ankaret]

Happy birthday, and I hope the thoughtless youngs go and have their 'Ageing and disability happen to people like us? No, surely not!' thoughts elsewhere.