How Not to Act Old: 185 Ways to Pass for Phat, Sick, Dope, Awesome, or at Least Not Totally Lame

By Pamela Redmond Satran

How to be cool when you're afraid you've forgotten how . . .

Sure, you can try to stay younger by exercising, coloring your hair, and wearing stylish clothes—but how do you respond when someone asks, "Do you Twitter?" How Not to Act Old gives you simple ways to come back from over the hill and to act as young as you look.

Covering everything from old-people entertainment (cancel that dinner party!) to old-people communication (it's called a "voice mail," not a "message," and no one leaves or listens to them anyway), Pamela Redmond Satran decodes the behaviors, viewpoints, and cultural touchstones that separate you from the hip young person you wish you still were. This irreverent guide is essential for anyone who doesn't want to embarrass their kids—or themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Aug 4, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061898846

Pamela Redmond Satran

Pamela Redmond Satran is the author of five novels and the coauthor of many bestselling baby name books, as well as the creator of nameberry.com. A columnist for Glamour, she writes frequently for the New York Times, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post. She lives not all that far from Brooklyn and plans to act thirty-three forever.

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#1 Stop Using E-mail

Leave it to the evil young to get all of us old people addicted to e-mail, and then to abandon the form in favor of texting and Facebook. Like bikini waxing (more on that later), e-mail is proving to be one of the Great Age Divides. Old people can’t figure out why anyone would text, IM, or Facebook (wait: is that a verb?) instead of e-mail; how can you be articulate while typing with your thumbs? Why would you want everything you say to be public?

And young people hate e-mailing because it’s…old.

Well, I don’t care if e-mail is old; I can’t stop using it. That’s right, I’m addicted to e-mail, just as I am to dark chocolate after lunch and nitrous oxide at the dentist. I joined LinkedIn and Facebook and all those other services, and now I don’t know what to do with them—or on them—or however you say it. So if you want to get in touch with me, send me an e-mail.

Just make sure it doesn’t look like this one:

HOW NOT TO E-MAIL OLD: 10 MUSTS TO AVOID

July 12, 2016¹

Dear Pam,²

Thank you for inviting me to your party.³

Unfortunately,⁴ I will not be able to attend as I’ll be having my false teeth fitted that day. My teeth had been bothering me for quite some time.

You know how it is when your gums start receding and then you crack a tooth or two chomping down on hard candy. Next thing you know you need a root canal, and then a crown, and then it’s just a house of cards in there.⁵

That’s what happened to me, and so I found this dentist, Dr. Marino, out in Clifton, who said he’d pull them all out for just $4,000, which sounded like a bargain to me, so I told him….⁶

So write back and tell me what’s going on with you.⁷

Your friend,⁸

Don⁹

www.donjenson.com¹⁰

#2 Don’t Say Awesome, Dude, or Yo, You Copped Fire, Son

Slang is basically a shorthand way to let other people know how old you are. The problem is it doesn’t work as simply and directly as you might think.

Using too-young slang, for instance, can very easily backfire and make you seem older, not younger, than you are. It’s akin to wearing a yellow miniskirt or driving a Zipcar; you’re trying too hard to be comfortable with something that was obviously minted by and for a generation that came way after yours.

The word awesome is a prime example. Few people over the age of forty can say awesome in what sounds like their native tongue. For the most part, if you’re older than forty, don’t even attempt to say anything more modern than cool.

Of course, you also don’t want to swing too far the other way and use outmoded words like keen, neat, or smart.

It goes without saying that you must avoid such adolescent and hipster lingo as phat, fierce, and dope. Even typing those words makes me feel a little sick, and I mean that in the old-fashioned, barfy sense of the word.

It may, however, be possible to successfully straddle the young-old slang divide and come up with something both cool and age-free by using outmoded words with confidence and irony. Groovy!

GUIDE TO 11 YOUNG-OLD SLANG EXPRESSIONS

#3 Unstrap That Rolex

What? you ask. "What’s the problem with my watch? Ohhhh, maybe it’s that I’m not supposed to wear something so expensive strapped around my wrist. I guess that’s the thing that makes me look old, bourgeois, and overly self-satisfied."

Well, yeah, except that’s not really the problem. The problem is wearing any watch at all. The young do not wear watches. In fact, a naked wrist has become as emblematic of youth as ungray hair and a perky butt.

Young people use their cell phones to tell the time, and if you want to seem young, you should, too. Just remember to flip your phone open or light it up with one hand, and to use your thumb—not your index finger—to do whatever it is you need to do. And try to make out the numbers without having to put on your glasses.

#4 Don’t Fear the Waxer

Listen, you can have all the work in the world done. You can get Botoxed and Restalyned till you’re smooth as a balloon; you can have your boobs lifted to your chin and your tummy tucked into your backbone.

But if you don’t wax down there, anybody who gets close enough—and that includes the entire locker room at the gym—is going to know you’re old.

Waxing is one of the major differences between young and older women. We came of age feeling it was sacrilegious to so much as pluck one hair; they decided to shear most of it off. And even when we thought maybe we’d surprise our husbands for our twentieth anniversary, we were nervous. We saw The 40-Year-Old Virgin, after all. We knew it was going to hurt, plus be embarrassing, plus who knew what kind of diseases we might pick up.

If you’re a Waxing Virgin, don’t be afraid. It’s not that bad. And the alternative is even worse: old below the belt.

40-YEAR-OLD BIKINI WAXING VIRGIN? 9 THINGS TO EXPECT

The waxer will be waaaay more comfortable than you. After all, she’s done this lots of time before.

While it’s not strictly necessary to trim your pubic hair before you get waxed, waxing is easier if the hair is shorter to begin with, so you may want to get a head start.

If you’re getting an American wax—which is just a basic cleanup—you can leave your panties on. The waxer may twist and/or knot them to leave the sides of your groin area exposed for waxing.

A French wax is, technically, when you take most of the hair off, leaving only a landing strip down the center front, which can be anywhere from a thin line to a couple of inches wide.

A Brazilian, which you’ve undoubtedly heard about, is technically getting it all taken off—though you can also specify a Brazilian with a landing strip, which some people call a (yuck) Mohawk.

The varying terminology means you can’t just resort to some euphemistic shorthand such as I’d like a Brazilian and be sure you’re not going to walk out of there looking like a plucked chicken. Unfortunately, at least the first time, you’re going to have to spell it all out.

Does it hurt? Yes, though a couple of aspirin taken a half hour before can help. Lotion or baby powder and wearing a soft pair of sweatpants instead of stiff jeans home from the salon is also advised.

The big question: Why do it? Sex, baby. Assuming you’re not parading around regularly in a string bikini, feeling sexier—and looking hotter—is the only conceivable rationale for a bikini wax.

The bigger downside: if you like it, you’re going to have to keep doing it. How often? As frequently as every three or four weeks. Ouch!

#5 Avoid Direct Confrontation

Maybe it’s this silent, desktop world we inhabit. Maybe it’s the new culture of positivity and triumph over depression. But having a big confrontation, complete with shouting, threats, revelations, and tears is a decidedly old, out-of-it thing to do.

If young people want to fire you or stop seeing you, they’ll just stop returning your messages. Or defriend you on Facebook. If they’re angry about something you’ve done to them, they’ll blog about it. Or send topless pictures of you on their cell phones to all their friends. I’m not kidding.

So what do you do if you have a problem with someone young? First, do some deep breathing, take a yoga class, smoke a joint, drink a martini—whatever you need to do to get in a more, ahem, relaxed mood. Then, if you must raise the issue, do so electronically, couched in passive-aggressive—or even passive-passive—language. Say you’re having some issues with the process. Or rather, say I’m wondering whether you’re having an issue with our process?

Question marks at the end of every sentence are good. Then, if the other person responds, don’t reply. Or take at least twice as long to respond as he or she took in the first place. If you’re as wise as you should be by your age, you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut until the problem disappears by itself…or the offending young person moves to Seattle.

#6 Don’t Leave a Message

This is a weird one, contributed by my nineteen-year-old son Joe. Only old people leave voice mails, says

Reviews for How Not to Act Old

[cecilturtle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Of course, only the old can truly appreciate this book... it had me laughing at loud as I read caricatures of behaviours and tongue-in-cheek advice on how to interpret and adapt to today's youth. Redman Satran makes no bones about this being her observations and "studies", yet they are incisive, hilarious (if not a bit cynical) and very complete - no topic is too taboo or unfashionable. My favourites : tattoos for the old and uncool ways to die. A great read to put your worries into perspective!