Are you old? A difficult question to answer, right.
Age is just a number, it does not define who you are. It’s all in your head.
And remember, whatever happens… Old is cool !!
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Léa Saillet
All you need is love. It is well known, shared by lot of people, and especially right now, when winter is coming, or when crazy people decide to break your tranquillity and try to attempt to the life of people you love, or of the city you are fond of.
Today, we decided to share our love for elderly people, and to show you that there are at the center of some heartwarming tear-sheding stories.
The first story we’d like to talk about is the one of Eugene Bostick. An 80 years old Texan man, who decided to take in all abandoned dogs from his neighborhood. The man declared to The Dodo (a website for the love of animals, you can find here):
« We live down on a dead-end street, where me and my brother have a horse barn. People sometimes come by and dump dogs out here, leaving them to starve. So, we started feeding them, letting them in, taking them to the vet to get them spayed and neutered. We made a place for them to live. »
You want to warm your heart ? watch this video!
But we could not talk of heartwarming stories without mentionning these elderly couple beautiful love stories ? These pensioners tell you of the happiest moments in their couple life and it is really touching. Learn about Helen, 101, and Maurice, 102, happiest moments : the birth of their first child, their wedding day and the day they became grandparents. The film won a BAFTA.
Randomness in love : Maurice walked into her parents’ shop for the first time to pick up an order… and didn’t leave for three hours.
Then
Now
And now it is time for our third story. Picture, it’s Saturday night and you want to shake your booty and go dance all night long. Would you rather party with elderlies or with people your own age ? My guess, you would choose the second option. But only because you have not watched grandma Esther dancing! Do not miss it, and especially, do not hesitate to swing ! The video is here, and the name of the song is Runaround Sue by Dion.
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Nils, 6 and half years old gave us some of his drawings to put up.
First a drawing he did for father’s day, or here I guess Grandfather’s day : where he says « my grandpa is a genius handyman, and he is like a friend » or in french « mon grand-père est un bricoleur de génie, et c’est comme un ami ».
Portraits of his grandma and grandpa:
Then two more realistic portraits of his grandma and grandpa, where he tried to reproduce their singularities – his loving grandma’s big mole or his grandpa’s baldness.
Enjoy !
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My grand-parents have been married for 52 years. Quite the time. Obviously sometime they quarrel, they throw harsh words at each others, they are bored, but some other times, when I will call them over, my grandma would be like – your grand-father just threw a pillow at me, while I was distracted answering the phone.
And so 53 years after their first meeting I asked them to go over their story one more time.
What happens when two people tell the same story, just in a very different way ? Well for you to discover – if you speak french, here are the exclusive soundtracks.
First they tell their romance in a very different way. What they both agree on was that it all started in a train.
– My grandpa speaks about how he was an officer at the time, how he first found my grandma charming, and somehow managed to sit next to her one day, and then how it started to become an habit, and how he showed her around in his car – he is very proud of this car, a Porsches, though he doesn’t own it anymore.
- My grandma tells me about this young officer, whom she found charming, but whose deep toned voice deeply attracted her, and how she saw he was keeping a spot for her to sit.
My grand-parents in Venice
Interestingly enough, what they don’t speak about in that piece – and the first thing I would be to start with if I had to tell their story – is how both of them were married at the time all this train romance happened.
Actually, as I asked her about it, just after I recorded, my Grandma told me how lucky she was her first husband did not oppose the divorce and her keeping their child, otherwise it would have been made really difficult given the law at the time. And she also added that her family was not too keen on her getting a divorce, since well back in the 1950’s it was still a big deal.
And I clearly remember how admirative I was the first time she told me about it, because on the moment I thought, yes, that is the kind of woman I want to grow up to, someone who stands for her own happiness and choices.
Can you imagine, having a romance taking the subway / tube / metro / RER / regional train ?
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The sun just went down, it’s cold, it’s november, it’s winter and most importantly it’s officially starting to be the end of the week-end. In a few hours your alarm clock (aka smartphones for most of us) unfriendly buzzing and ringing will start again, and it will be the dawn of a new day.
But imagine in a parallele universe, where work did not exist, and there would be no such thing as a week-end or a holiday, where you would have time to do things – real actual time. Doesn’t it sound lovely…? Well it exists, our grand-parents do have a bunch of free time on their hands.
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Raphaëlle Barbier
One of our readers, Amélie, told us about her grandma, Jacqueline: energetic, passionate, and always ready to gossip with her grand-daughters. So we decided to give Jacqueline a call, and had a little chit-chat with her. Nothing like a formal interview. Just a casual talk about her life, her activities, her thoughts on ageing… Here are some excerpts from this phone call we’d like to share with you.
“Well, I was 17, he was 20… He left for the army then… You know how I used to call him with my friends ? “The dummy of the 5th floor”. He would always sit on the window ledge, just as Pierrot sitting on the moon. There was no barrier, he could have killed himself…”
(Note: 60 years later, she’s still living with the “dummy of the 5th floor”.)
“You know, when you’re young, you do silly things. When I was 13 or 14, I would go up to the 6th floor of my building, go out through the attic room’s window and walk on the gutter. I was a bit of a boisterous child to be honest! (…) When I chat with my grand-daughters, I’m not like “Don’t do this, don’t do that!”. I think each experience is unique.”
“I think you have to find something you’re interested in, to start a new life, a “third life”. One of my friends, she’s 75, she started to take english classes. She’s also enrolled in a bicycle club, a hiking club, she’s using a tablet… She’s even a member of a dating site! I mean, it’s like young people. Now it’s quite common to be part of a dating site at this age. They are meeting during activites, in groups. That didn’t exist before.”
“I think Internet really brough something new. It’s amazing. Thanks to it, people can travel easily, by using BlaBlaCar for instance. When I compare it to when my mother was 75… there was nothing back then!
Facebook and Skype are really useful to get updates from my grandchildren. Also, if they tell me “Grandma, I’m going to visit this or that city this weekend”, I can lookit up on the internet and discover more about those cities too. I really think this is amazing. I travel thanks to the Internet.
I also play online: Scrabble, draughts… I’m playing against people who are in Portugal, in the West Indies… I also chat with them sometimes. I really enjoy it! I could spend 2 hours in a row, just playing and chatting on my computer.”
“Well, I try to stay coquette. My mother was a dressmaker. She used to create tailored clothes for me. When I saw some piece I liked in a magazine, she would make it.”
“I think that mentally, you don’t really age. I mean, I don’t feel like I’m 75. When I say “I’m 75”, it does sound old, but I don’t think it is. Some decades ago, I think that to be 75 was… old. But now things have changed. You’re better off being 75 now than 40 years ago !
I really think it’s all in your head. Your personality remains the same… Last week, I was in a shop, and the owner told my husband “Your wife has such beautiful eyes”. Though he was old, he was still susceptible to beauty. Life doesn’t stop, you still pay attention to people’s charm. And you can restart you life, even when you’re a widow.
Plus, thanks to your grandchildren, you can also look to the future more easily. You want to live, you want to see. And well, of course you want to stay in this world to meet the future babies ;)”
Thank you Amélie for giving us the opportunity to talk with your grandmother, and thanks a lot Jacqueline for taking the time to share some stories with us! We truly appreciate it 
Want to share your story too? Submit your grandparents’ portrait here!
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Let me explain how come :
– JC spends most of his time reading comics. Not any comics though: mainly The Adventures of Tintin by famous Belgian cartoonist Hergé. As if it weren’t enough, he reads them in German because the original version is too little a challenge.
– JC owns a forest. It is a common belief that pensioners enjoy nothing like having their own peaceful place in the sunshine and, cherry on top, at the seaside. What JC fancies is showing up in his forest – that he bought for a song back in the day – with his friends and chop down some wood.
– JC has an electric car. Actually, it’s been almost a decade since he began driving his Prius around town every now and then. He’s now getting ready to take it to the next level once the first hydrogen-powered car comes out.
– JC has the coolest collection of sports caps and shirts. Champion, Sergio Tachini, Ellesse, Fila… in short all these brands that wannabe kids are wearing anew. JC has never stopped wearing them.
– JC mixes his wine with water. Because he can.
– JC doesn’t have a mustache, or a beard, or hair at all.
By the way…
JC is not Jesus Christ. JC is Jean-Claude. High five Grandpa.
JC
And you, how cool is your grandpa? And you grandma? Everyone can contribute to Old Is Cool, so tell us at oldiscool.contact@gmail.com!
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Clue – Burger King did not launch a new version of the Whooper.
It was created in 1990, by the UN, as part of a program to raise awareness on the issues surrounding ageing, as well as promote the contributions of elderly to the society.
UN 25th International Older people Day
If you have not heard of it, it is not much of a surprise, given the fact it is lost in a sea of other celebrations, and that if you go on the web, one can see that few medias talked about it, and few cities or governments took up this opportunity to speak about elderly.
International organizations did talk about it, and some initiatives took place in countries, such as the “give an old person a flower” by the NGO Petit Frère des Pauvres or “visit an old person” by Alliance VITA.
Although it probably did not reach a lot of people, for the people it did reach it delivered a pretty powerful message !
UN Visual
Most of the official talks were done by the UN (United Nations) or the WHO (World Health Organization). Their spokespersons / press releases tackled the stereotypes of elderlies as frail and dependent.
Both emphasized:
But as several of the WHO representatives underlined it in side-statements, the first challenge is to make people change their mind about elderlies, and view them under a more positive light. As Dr. John Beard, WHO Director of the Department of Ageing and Life Course, puts it “Unfortunately, 70 does not yet appear to be the new 60, but it could be, and it should be”.
At this point, you might think “but I have a rather good opinion of old people”, I don’t think there are that many bad stereotypes or prejudices associated with the fact of being old.
A quote by one the organizers of the Alliance VITA initiative is quite enlightening on the subject:
“It – being in the contact of elderly – made us realize of the youthfulness and of the positive state of mind of numerous older people, which goes against the prejudices that we can usually have (pessimistic and bitter)”.
What you might think
VS
What it might be
A French sociologist, Jean-Jacques Aymot, in an article published on that very day, goes as far as speaking of “âgisme” or agism, following the naming of racism or sexism.
He argues that old people are discriminated and prejudiced against in daily life – someone drives badly it must be an old person or a woman, old persons are boring-. This negative perception even influences the way old people are going to think about themselves. Thus he pushes forward a less age-based differences and more opportunities for elderly to be integrated in the society. For example, he believes, the driving license should not be taken away automatically when someone turns 60, since eye related problems don’t usually patiently await that age to declare themselves.
So there might indeed be a slight problem of perception.
Raphaëlle Barbier
Michael Caine playing Alfred in Batman Begins.
He is playing Fred Ballinger, a retired music composer, who is in a luxury SPA resort in Switzerland for his holidays. He doesn’t really care anymore what people think of him.
Michael Caine playing Fred Ballinger in Youth.
The movie opens to Michael Caine, talking to an emissary of the queen and refusing to perform his “Simple Songs” (his most famous music piece). How cool is that?
It is rare for a movie’s main character to be an old person. It is even more rare if that person is not famous. And even more so if the movie is actually good – which it is.
The main character is not too cliché.
Yes, he has problems that comes with aging: loss of memory, less vigour, distachement. But he is also really witty and sarcastic, and is still pretty active.
Yes, they do speak about their prostate and their loss of memory, but it’s only small chitchats, and it’s not what define them.
For you to enjoy!
Although the movie is not a comedy – far from it – you will laugh, more than once, and might even end up shedding a tear or two.
Sorrentino masters the filming and plunges the spectators into an ever changing visual impression. To long aesthetic travelling shots with opera music, succeeds, swiss countryside walks, close up on weird angles and crazy dreams – shot real – scenes.
Apart from Fred and his friend, there is a lot of different characters : his heart broken daughter Lena, an actor in need of inspiration, a young massagist passionate about Dance evolution, a former – grown obese – soccer star, a current Miss Universe, among others. So you end up with characters from completely different environments, and with a quite impressive age range.
Smart look on
The film explores great – almost philosophical – themes: aging, memory, love and aging, memory, love and thirst for further fulfillment.
Especially if you reference back the movie to some other cultural items, such as Thomas Mann’s “Magic mountain”, which also happens to be taking place in a sanatorium, and has the same melancholic undertone.
Although the movie is named youth, it has more to do with growing older, experiencing new things and trying to go on.
Friendship can last foreverish: Fred and Mikey, know each other since childhood, and they are still getting along great. Fred’s daughter at some point is surprised by the fact that they don’t share all their life events and that they don’t always know all that’s happening in each others life, to what both reply “we only share the good stuff”.
Accepting your past is key to living in the present. All of the characters are somehow haunted by a part of their past. And ultimately the ones who try to avoid confronting it by going forward without looking back, are the one ending up miserables. The question is not whether you will suffer loss or not, but how you deal with it and get over it. It might not be the happiest life realization, but it is a pretty realistic one.
Relativise your everyday actions, they might not have as many consequences as you believe. Fred and his friend notice how few they remember from their childhood and agree that in the end no matter what you do, people will tend to forget. So carpe diem.
SPOILER
One last lesson you can derive from that movie is that there is hope. Although the movie has a pretty melancholic undertone, despite all the funny parts, can give a rather gloomy vision of life at times, it ends on a clearly hopeful opening. The monk that Fred made fun off because he could not levitates, does levitate at the end, rising in the sky above the mountains. The composer who did not want to lead his masterpiece does, and the daughter who was afraid of change confronts with her fears.
Raphaëlle Barbier