Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, February 19, 2003


GROWING VERY OLD BEFORE OUR TIME


ALL my friends seem to be growing older than me and when the restaurant discussion the other evening turned to Seniors Cards, I started looking around for the exit doors. Dr D retired recently and within a week he had suffered his first fall on the way home from the local shops. No damage was done except to his pride. His wife - known among their friends as The Bitch and proud of it - laughed whenever she retold the story at dinner, which was more than once. The Bitch. At 60, Dr D decided to call it quits from medical practice. He had seen too many colleagues hang on beyond their time, he said, and the deterioration of their own health between the ages of 60 and 65 was sad to witness. Not that he needed the money but, as a matter of principle, he applied for a Seniors Card, issued by the Office for the Ageing, which entitles people aged 60 and over to discounts on certain goods and services. Dr D could prove his age but to be eligible for a card, he also needed a signed declaration from a JP or a lawyer affirming that he now worked fewer than 20 hours a week. He asked a mate - a District Court Judge, as it happened - to sign the paperwork, thinking a Seniors Card would be in the return post, and was amazed to learn the application had been rejected. He rang the Office for the Ageing, only to have a woman tell him the form had not been signed by a proper lawyer - a mere Judge was not good enough. When Dr D pointed out that a Judge very likely was also a lawyer in South Australia, the woman said suspiciously: ``Are you sure?'' He eventually received the Seniors Card after appearing in person at the Office and now, having made his point, he is unlikely to use it. Nor is he likely to spend his retirement just filling in time until he dies, watching the SBS WeatherWatch, going on elderly outings to the zoo or popping into the local Over-50s Club for a hand of canasta or a quiz night with testing little questions such as ``In what city is the Melbourne Cup held?'' Am I alone in finding the concept of an Over-50s club utterly ridiculous? I mean, at an age when most people are thoroughly enjoying a busy middle age, what could an Over-50s club possibly offer us? Not for me, not at my age. I had the same sense of the ridiculous on reading a story recently about how volunteers over the age of 50 were needed by the Council on the Ageing - no relation to the Office _ to run health seminars for people their own age. Called "peer education'', the volunteers offer advice on taking medication and finding health care, the point being that such advice is more likely to be accepted from a "sympathetic ear''. Which is all well and good but is 50 not a bit young for this sort of program? I do not need a sympathetic ear telling me how to take my pills in the correct order or when to change my incontinence pad. Not yet. Maybe when I turn 60. Yes, turning 60 is a different matter entirely and Dr D should put his name down for one of the COTA seminars. There is one on preventing falls.