The Seniors Thread :-)

[darksideofthemoon]

"This is for the Senior members of CS, those born before 1947. Baby Boomers and Generations X & Y are welcome providing you are over 18 🙂

But this is definitely for people who are facing the last long haul.  We have survived babyhood, childhood, being teens and twenties... We have learned to read and write, to drive, have probably been married and the women have survived child birth.

The challenges are constant and the near misses of death are also there.  If we have become a senior we have learned to survive so much, and along the way we have, of course, gathered a great deal of knowledge about life.

The  belief that age diminishes us is not true, it changes us and not all of it is bad.  Yes there can be various forms of dementia for some, but that is also a disease that can happen in younger people.  Alzheimer's can also occur - it is another form of dementia and generally occurs in people over 65, although that can occur much earlier too and not everyone is going to get it.

Most of us keep our mental alertness up to the moment of death, even if we lose our hearing and our eyesight, but of course this can happen at any age too.

What changes is our physical strength, which diminishes but our mental strength and patience grows, it has to of course, to deal with this aging thing.

Arthritis, heart trouble, strokes - all these things associated with age can happen at any time in your life - arthritis can happen when you are a child but they don't like giving out new hips and knees until you are in your 50s and 60s or later.  We can talk about that too.

Cancer can happen any time and that is also something we can discuss here if you like.

The point of this thread is to give the Seniors a chance to talk about how they are coping with age, the challenges it presents and the fears that can come with it... loss of hearing or sight, aging spouses, living alone, retirement villages, even death...

So I will ask that the Juniors treat us in kindly fashion and remember, all this is going to happen to you too - providing you avoid death before you get here 🙂

So, onward and upward.  Let's go...."

[jvharrison]

Yes when do we get old my darling grandfather lived to 99 years and 9 months dying on my birthday.

He rode a horse till he was 85 and gave his licence up at 89......was full of spirit and laughter till a week before he died......just a wonderful old gentlemen.

Can vaguely remember my Nana putting my hair in curling rags......it was unmanageable then as it is now lol

We were taught to knit sew crochet cook also were taught how to strip and clean our fathers/grandfathers firearms.....and only then when we could do that competently without being reminded about how to do it were we ever taken out with the adults...........kids today lead a sheltered life.....and for the most part dont seem that multi skilled.  Would love to see some of the kiddies about today leading more of an outdoors lifestyle and being taught about nature and about bush craft.

My grandfather had a marvellous aboriginal family working for him..Jimmy worked on the property and Mary worked in the house........Jimmy was the most marvellous bushman and we learnt so much and used to hang onto every word he said lol

[mum*of*goldens]

Thank you so much for that!!!  I will check it out - sounds like it will be so worth it!!

Is it a year since you were in hospital????  My goodness that time has flown!  :-x

Yes a year on 27th Jan Rosie. Kinda wish I was back in there right now, enjoying their air conditioning. We've a portable one in the bedroom but it's just stopped blowing cool air. Dunno whats up with it, maybe it just can't cope with being on for 18 hours a day over the past couple of days. Daughter is on night shift and sleeps with it on during day, and for us, for half the night. Hope it rectifies itself soon. I am not coping well with this heat one bit.

[bluepanda555]

Another thing we didn't have when I was kid was all the extra-curricular activities available - or maybe it was because I grew up in a poor family/neighbourhood.  But then it was go to school and come home.  No outside classes for ballet, sport, drama, painting, elocution and so on.

  Come to think of it there probably were, but not to the extent there are now where parents seem to spend hours taxiing their kids all over the place.  Nothing wrong with it, it's great they can do it now.

We'd come home,eat our meat with 2 veg,   do homework, then listen to the radio (pre TV) - Superman,  The Search for the golden boomerang, Jason & the Argonauts, , Tarzan, Pick a Box, Jack Davey, while mum would darn socks with a wooden mushroom. and dad would chain smoke..... inside  of course .... not considered dangerous then.   

[purple_haize]

I use to listen to all the serials that were on the radio, my grandmother loved *Blue Hills*.........this was yrs. before we had television.

We also had a gas meter that my parents had to put coins in so we could have gas.

No fridges when I was little, I can remember the iceman coming with the lumps of ice for the icechests.

[grandmoon]

I can remember the Ice man coming and giving us kids large chips of ice to eat in the summer.

[darksideofthemoon]

The Argonauts on the ABC, I was Dinarchus 26, who were you panda?

I can still hear the music for Blue Hills in my mind.

Yes the iceman with his block of ice grandmoon and the milk and bread carts too.  I used to get up to the gate in time for the milkman to take me and a couple of other children around the block on his cart before dropping us off at home again... without my mother knowing because it was so early in the morning.  I think I was about 7 🙂

[margomeoz]

The thing i am remembering the most today is that you could go to the movies for one shilling and buy a heap to eat for another shilling.

Today I took one little grandaughter to see I bought A Zoo

and it cost $60 for seniors ticket kids ticket 2 choc tops and 2 waters. 😮

[darksideofthemoon]

Blazers Margo that is terrible, far to much money indeed.

Do you remember ha'penny icecreams?  and a penny would buy you a treasure trove of lollies.

What about later on with our stifly starched peticoats and circular skirts?

The real Rock & Roll and good old Elvis... of course our generation brought in Flower Power too :^O

[purple_haize]

I can remember going into the grocer shop, can still see the shop in my mind and my mum buying a bag for a shilling of broken biscuits.......

I have no idea why she always bought the broken ones, she must have had a reason.

The iceman, baker, milkman, soft drink man all had horse drawn carts.

I also remember the garbos came around to the back of the house to get the bins emptied them and brought them back.

I had starched peticoats and roped peticoats to go under the skirts.

I use to get a large bag of mixed lollies for a penny.....

[margomeoz]

I sure do remember all those things darkie loved those petticoats

probably made us look like the back of a barn. :^O

I remember on Mondays we used to get 2 shillings for lunch at the tuckshop because there was no bread.

I used to hate having to take lunch all the other days and there was this girl in our class who no one spoke to everyone used to call her a hunch back now of course I know it was spina bifida,

I used to talk to her because I was amazed that she got to buy her lunch every day and she hated it.

She asked if I would swap my awful peanut butter sandwiches for the pie and cake she always bought, naturally I was over the moon.

I often think of that not sure why I can see now that all she wanted was a mother who cared enough to make her lunch.

That is one of the bad things back then kids were very cruel about something they did not understand or something unusual.