Old Age

Philippe Noiret https://x.com/Paroles_auteurs/status/2075228225475629516

"It seems to me that they make stairs harder than they used to. The steps are higher, there are more of them. In any case, it's more difficult to take two steps at a time. Today, I can only take one at a time.

It's also worth noting the small print they use now. The newspapers keep getting farther and farther away from me when I read them: I have to cross my eyes to manage it. The other day, I almost had to step out of the phone booth to read the numbers on the coin slots.

It's ridiculous to suggest that a person my age needs glasses, but the only other way for me to keep up with the news is to have it read out loud to me—which doesn't satisfy me much, because these days people speak so softly that I can't hear them very well.

Everything is farther away. The distance from my house to the train station has doubled, and they've added a hill that I never noticed before.

On top of that, the trains leave earlier. I've lost the habit of running to catch them, given that they start a little earlier, just as I arrive.

They don't use the same fabric for suits anymore, either. All my suits tend to shrink, especially around the waist.

Their shoelaces are harder to reach, too.

Time itself has changed. Winters are colder, summers are hotter. I'd travel, if it weren't so far away. The snow is heavier when I try to shovel it. The drafts are stronger. It must be the way they make windows these days.

People are younger than they were when I was their age.

I recently went to a reunion of my university's alumni, and I was shocked to see what babies they admit as students. To be fair, they seem more polite than we were; several of them called me sir; one even offered to help me cross the street.

Parallel phenomenon: people my age are older than I am. I'm well aware that my generation is approaching what has come to be called a certain age, but is that any reason for my classmates to shuffle along in a state of advanced senility?

At the university bar that evening, I ran into a classmate. He'd changed so much that he didn't recognize me."