This article seems like so much crap. I'm a 74 year old male, a working sales manager at a radio group, and my oldest employee is 38. We all get along fine, do our jobs, and don't obsess about our ages.

Old people need to be isolated and studied so it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use.

Yes. It blows.

is amazing, wrinkle upon wrinkle, with skin so thin you can see through it, and still beautiful. I'm 50, and getting old is okay. A lot of stuff you worried about when you were younger has already blown up in your face and there's nothing left to do except (as kate hepburn said) keep-a-goin.

At the age of almost 70, I can identify with much of what I read in "Don't Fear the Reaper!" Indeed, it is humbling to watch one's body degenerate as one's head and heart become more mature and wise!

What I think needs to be said about growing old is that it is not the same experience for everyone! People who are pessimistic and paranoid when younger will probably become bitter and avoidant as they become older--and few will seek their company. On the other hand, those who are "Pollyannas" may become more shallow and uninteresting--full of goodiness and bromides! Those of us who are "Cassandras" continue to loosen our truthtelling tongues--and scare more than a few. Except the young! They seem to love hearing what the world is really about! The challenge here is to allow ourselves to laugh at the foolishness of the world--and not to be so worried about the falseness and folly that surrounds us!

The truly wise, I think, are those who have suffered much and learned that nothing really matters except living life in an authentic way--whatever that might mean. These are the few! And to be treasured!!!!

At 63 I hear the clock ticking (or, rather, see time reeling by on my cell phone), but it doesn't seem to bother me (yet). By the scale of those around me in age, I am healthy and happy, which is a good thing for I am among the millions who lack health insurance! I do rewarding work as a free-lance graphics designer, enjoy good food and wine, and have a long-time spouse who is 16 years my junior, the better to take care of me in my REAL old age... All in all, I feel lucky. But as for imparting wisdom, don't come knocking on my door. I don't feel a whit smarter than I did at 35. Okay, perhaps I wouldn't have invested in those typewriter repair businesses back in 1991. But that's about it. Have fun, folks. Travel more. Eat less. Try like hell to be happy. (I wonder if I can get a book deal to say that in 425 pages?)

"Perhaps when that moment comes, a person whose identity has hinged on mastery discovers that its rewards are pretty thin after all, and the knack for enjoying other kinds of relationships has atrophied. Humility and adaptability, as Athill and Alford's mother demonstrate, serve the aged much better."

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Perhaps. But then, "mastery" may serve the young better. If it has to be one or the other, I'd rather plan my life around having a pleasant youth than a pleasant old age.

"Old people need to be isolated and studied so it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use."

In my case that would be cheddar, sardines and Merlot. And most important: never stop walking.

Get off my lawn

The books (or at least the review) seem to be more about refuting/justifying contemporary lifestyle choices than garnering wisdom from the old (hardly a novel thought, that). Live a "non-conformist" life sans spouse and kids, you'll be serene and thoughtful at the end; go with the crowd, you'll be miserable and get divorced at age 80-- after which, you'll be serene and thoughtful, of course.

"We've misinterpreted Darwin. It's not survival of the fittest. It's survival of the most adaptable,"

She is entitled to her own opinion and to her witty aphorisms, but Alford's mother has misrepresented Darwinian fitness, which is defined in terms of the number of viable surviving offspring an organism leaves. Physical fitness and longevity, while they may contribute to that, are not the important measures; neither is aging gracefully. There is some speculation that human longevity incurs some fitness in that babies with living grandmothers seem to do better than those who don't. The fit are the individuals that can adapt to the environment successfully enough to leave large numbers of surviving offspring, who in turn adapt successfully enough that they too leave large numbers (however large numbers are defined, which varies by species and the environment in which they live). Whether they die at thirty or ninety has very little to do with it.

Old age isn't for sissies. I wish I could remember who said that. Great works by older masters include the poems of Yeats, who probably wrote more and shrewder and more beautiful and more moving poems about aging than anyone ever. And not a shred of sentimentality in them, by the way.

Me, I'm 64, considering these matters. Check back with me in a couple of decades.

As a veteran pharmacist with close to 50 years experience let me share these nuggets. Older folks complain more and are more demanding than others. No matter how excellent the service, they bitch and moan way out of line. They are also more selfish than others. In my twenties I found it hard to believe that sweet old grannies were in reality regressing toward their terrible two's. I don't care what the justifications for this bad behavior are, they just need to grow up.

"Don't frown -- your face might freeze that way!"

I've logged countless hours with elderly friends and relatives, and I've spent a good deal of time in nursing homes as well, not because it was my job but because of my lay ministry activities.

The most important thing I have observed about all these folks is that as we get older, we just get more so. That is, our traits and tendencies intensify with age. With the exception of a grandfather who underwent a remarkable transformation in his eighties, I haven't seen old dogs learning many new tricks.

The self-pitying cousin with the cheerful wife becomes insufferably so after his cheerful wife passes away, to the point that nobody wants to spend any time with him.

The mother-in-law who was always interested in other people remains so even in the face of the deaths of two of her three children, so while her husband and many of her old friends are passing away, she continues to make new friends of all ages until the day she dies.

So I try to monitor my habits with the knowledge that they had darned well better be the sorts of habits that will sustain me throughout my life.

"What you know about life as a result of having lived it for -- pick a number -- 40, 50, 60, 70 or 80 years can only really be known by someone who's done that time; the reward is relatively nontransferable."

This reminds me of an "amusing anecdote" I read in the Reader's Digest a number of years ago. At a 60th birthday party being held in a restaurant, the honoree was asked to speak a few words to the friends and relations gathered around him. After thanking them, he remarked, "If only I knew at 18 what I know now!"

A waitress standing nearby observed this, and after he sat down she came over to him and quietly asked, "I'm 18 -- what do you know?"