Old in the Knees but Young at Heart: Feel the Rain, Do Not Just Get Wet

By Reza Noubary

As long as you have enthusiasm you radiate energy of young-hood.

The story of our senior years is both interesting and fascinating. A lot can be said about the experiences we go through and the changes we observe. This book is a collection of short articles and essays about some aspects of life in general and old age in particular. Its goal is to delight readers and help them to see the positive aspects of the senior life.

Topics included cover both serious and funny sides of growing old. Some topics are general, and others are basic lessons I learned while living in the Middle East, Europe, and North America. For the ease of reading, the articles are presented independently from one another whenever possible. Sources utilized are cited in the end of each article. Few related topics are also included for stimulation of worked-out minds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664179240

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by Reza Noubary.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/10/2021

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Contents

Preface

Good Old Days

How Do I Feel?

Life

About the Book

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter 1 Funny Side of Senior Years

A. Quotes about Old Age

B. Short Jokes about Forgetfulness

T-Shirt for Older/Wiser

C. Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

D. Life Lessons I Put in Rhyme

E. Selected Rumi’s Quotes

F. Translations of Selected Rumi’s Poems (My Translations)

H. Quotes about Enthusiasm

Chapter 2 Advantages of Getting Old

On Growing Old

Life Starts after Fifty

Making Aging a Smooth Ride

Can I Postpone My Death Day?

Family, the Source of Happiness

Christmas, Time to Treasure Life

Legacy of Kindness

Beauty Bias

America, the Land of Love and Care

More on United States

Risk, Lottery, and Big Dreams

Chapter 3 Humor, Medicine for Old Age

Some Jokes for Grandchildren

Mathematical Humor

What Makes Us Laugh?

Theorems

About the Book by Populus

Some Math Jokes

No Lemon, No Melon

Palindrome Poems

Palindromic Number

Chapter 4 Coincidences

Presidency and July 4

Coincidences

Bridge Hands

Lincoln and Kennedy Connections

More on United States Presidents

Teaching Values

Baseball Rookie’s Paradox

The History of Coincidences

Teaching Probability Using Coincidences

Hot Hand: Does Success Breed Success?/Short Version

Hot Hand in Sports: Does Success Breed Success/Long Version

Where Should I Sit?

Analysis of the July 4 Coincidence

Personal Coincidences

Coincidence in International Settings

Chapter 5 Health

Medical Science Is Not an Exact Science

Medical Errors: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the United States

Are Diagnostic Tests Reliable?

Pandemics

Your Brain, a Supercomputer

An Hour in the Gym or a Glass of Wine?

Napping Is More Than a Luxury

Is Fat All That Bad?

Benefits of Fat

A Little Fat Does the Body Good

Different Types of Fat

Concluding Remarks

Sweating is Helpful

Our Cooling System

Hyperhidrosis

Benefits of Sweating

Chapter 6 Safety

Risk, an Exposure to Danger

Mathematical Expressions of Risk

Should I Fly or Drive?

Flood Risk, Should I Buy Insurance?

Return Periods

Scientists as Pious People

Christianity and Islam

Chapter 7 The Wonderful World of Numbers

Mathematics

What Is Mathematics After All?

Confusion about Mathematics

Numeration Systems

Irish Philosophy of Life

Binary Decision, a Real World Example

Binary Reasoning

Birthday Surprises

Amazing Facts about Pi

Pi, a Superstar

Who Cares

Piem

Pi and Popular Culture

Pi, an Icon

Pi at a Glance

Pi and Mysteries of Universe

Number Based Conspiracies

Number 23

On Finding the Right Partner

Anniversary and Flowers

Ultimate Record for 100-Meter Dash

Who Is Better?

How Good Was Michael Jordan?

Prime Numbers

Imaginary Numbers

Averages or Extremes?

Mathematical Tennis

Can a Monkey Type the Book Hamlet?

Counting the Options

Fibonacci, Art, Music, and Nature

Repeating Decimals and Cyclic Numbers

142,857. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=576354.

Music

Mathematics of Music

The Relationship

Probability and Music

Teaching Aspect

Love of Music

Fibonacci Sequence

Numbers and Songs

State of Mathematics in the United States

Euler’s e

History

Rare Events

Calculation of e

Bernoulli’s Observation

Zero

Numbers and Communication

My Experience with Numbers

Extended Numbers

Bits, Bytes, Nibbles, and Unsigned Integers Bits

Selecting a Partner

Records

Other Interesting Numbers

Patterns

Permutation Pattern

Number Paradoxes

Numbers and ASL

Social Security Numbers

Zip Code

Correlation?

Non-Euclidean Geometries

Mathematics and Sports

Classification of Sports

Teaching Value of Sports

Chapter 8 Investment

Modeling the Stock Market

Chaos, a Misunderstood Concept

Chapter 9 A Little Politics

Human Rights: A Puzzling Question

Chickens and Their Lives

Human Rights and Culture

East-West Confusion

Are Human Beings Rational?

Indifference

Globalization: A Problem or a Solution?

Economic Inequality

Pascal’s Argument Regarding God

Chapter 10 Happy Ending

Unusual Times

My Poems

Retirement

Science/Math

My Story

PREFACE

Once I was young; now I’m fifty/sixty/seventy

Going through the different phases of life as they are expected to be

Though old age means wrinkles, gray hairs, and some extra pounds

I welcome them all as for maturity they are

the parts/ingredients of recipe/fee

Though I no longer have/enjoy my youth, energy, and zest

I now have valuable experiences and wisdom, a great life remedy

I did raise a family, ran a household, and paid the bills

Survived the obstacles/risks and dealt with them alone and independently

Though not possessing a young body, I carry

my soul, courage, and strength

I feel ready to face new challenges with grace

and pride, whatever is my destiny

I am satisfied with where I stand today, proud

of all that I have accomplished

As I have learned that getting old is a privilege,

something that has been denied to so many.

Reza Noubary

H EALTHY AGING USUALLY comes with more freedom and less stress, tension, and obligations. According to Aging: What to Expect, aging is the progressive accumulation of changes associated with increasing susceptibility to health issues. In addition to wrinkles, turkey necks, and gray hair, aging can lead to many other changes. Although we cannot stop the aging process, we can minimize its effects through making appropriate choices. It is well established that maintaining physical and social activities, avoiding loneliness, securing family’s love and support, having a positive attitude, staying curious, finding ways to motivate oneself, welcoming opportunities to learn new things, laughing as much as possible, and having a four-legged friend can all help to slow down the process.

As pointed out by Robert Muller, Our physical body may be less efficient and less beautiful in old age. But nature has given us an enormous compensation: our mind is richer, our soul is broader, and our wisdom is at a peak. We are so happy with the riches of our advanced peak age that, contrary to general belief, we would not wish to return to youth.

Researchers from Yale and Miami University determined that people who saw growing older as something positive lived a whopping seven and a half years longer than those who did not. Becca Levy at the Yale School of Public Health, showed that putting a more positive spin on our general view of aging can make a profound difference in the health of people over sixty-five.

Health is the real wealth, and we can help it or take care of it through giving up bad habits and replacing them with healthy choices by learning to live in the moment, by accepting the changes, and by adapting to them. We often tend to believe that doctors know it all and can find a solution for any medical problems forgetting our own body’s power of recovery and invaluable repair mechanism.

This book is about some positive aspects of aging and is based mostly on my personal experiences as an aging mathematician. It begins with an example of how mathematics may be used to clarify or answer certain questions.

Some part of book may be a little technical. However they can safely be ignored if not interested.

GOOD OLD DAYS

The sand will brush off

The sault will wash off

The good days will come to the end

But our memories will standoff

Reza Noubary

W HY, IN MY youth, summers were more fun and winters were colder with more snow? Why were people happier? Although some may disagree, majority of my older friends think the way I do. Could it be because we older people are forgetful, or is there any logical/mathematical explanation for it? I think the latter is the case and hope that you will find the explanation convincing. Here, I will use what is known as theory of records discussed later in detail. I am sure you have heard about sport records, stock market records, and such. But few of people are aware that there is a very elegant mathematical theory behind the theory of records.

To simplify the problem, let me consider only the annual snowfall in a given region. Think of a group of babies who will be born on January 1, next year, somewhere with snowfall, and our goal is to find a reasonable answer to the following question: how many personal (not historical) record snowfalls would a randomly selected member of this group expect to experience during his/her lifetime?

Clearly, for the whole group, the first year’s snowfall will be a record as it is the largest in their life so far—that is, by age one, they all will experience one personal snowfall record. But what about the second year? This will depend on whether in places they live a second years snowfall will be more or less than that of the first year. Since there is no significant trend in the amount of snowfall, the chances of having no new record and one new record are both 50 percent. So, theoretically, we expect half of the babies to experience a new record and half no new record. So averaging the zeros and ones, we may count this as 1/2 record on average, which is same as saying that half of the babies are expected to experience a new record. Using the same logic, the chance that the third year (2024) produces a new personal record is 1/3 and could be counted as 1/3 record. The same applies to years 4, 5, …, n, and we get the following formula:

Expected Number of Records at the Age n = 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + … + 1/n

For example, for a baby or group of babies who will live to one hundred, we get

1+1⁄2+1⁄3+ ⋯ +1⁄100 = 5.19

or five records on average. Using the results of the theory of records (explained later in the book), we can calculate odds for experiencing a specific number of records. For example, for one hundred years, the probability of experiencing five records is 21 percent and is, in fact, the most likely scenario. The following graph presents the expected number of records for ages one to one hundred.

48_a_lbj23.jpg

Using the above formula, by the age of one, all babies will experience one record. By age four, the expected or average number of records experienced is two (1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 = 2.083). By age eleven, three (1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + … 1/11 = 3.02). By age thirty-one is four (1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + … + 1/31 = 4.02). And at age eighty-three, five (1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + … 1/83 = 5). Of course, not all babies will experience the same number of personal records, but if we average the number of records each of them experiences in their lives, we get very close to what the above formula predicts.

Now, what do all these have to do with our original question? Well, this is a key to the fact that in our youth, winters were colder with more snow. To see this, just think about my friends, age thirty-two to eighty-two. Most of them remember the fourth record they have experienced around age thirty-one. After that, all the years up to the age of eighty-three are not going to produce a new record for them. In other words, they will always remember the one they experienced when they were around thirty-one. As a result, for them, all the winters since then may feel just average or typical.

HOW DO I FEEL?

Aging is like climbing; moving higher is rewarded by a better view.

The moon is always full, it is just our view that is partial. - Jacki Deakin

I feel that:

• if I do not let my past die, it will not let me live.

• the greatest loss in life is not death but having no reason to live for.

• it is ok to stay home and do absolutely nothing.

• hanging out with my grandchildren feels like visiting the best part of my life.

• once something is said, it cannot be forgotten, only forgiven.

• I am now free of lots of life’s stresses and pressures.

• I should not let my feelings get to deed as things change.

• honesty is not a recipe to make lots of friends but few real ones.

• it is a mistake to assume that others think like me.

A LTHOUGH SOME PEOPLE may find this a bit surprising, I no longer have interest in becoming young and starting the life over. Maybe because I do not want to exchange my enjoyable senior years, great friends, beloved family, decent achievements, and delightful memories for the stress of young-hood and fewer white hair or a flatter belly.

I enjoy having the feeling of being kinder and less critical of others and of myself. Of being friends with who I am and seeing no need or having no pressure to change myself. For not blaming myself for eating a few extra bites or not making my bed. For not questioning myself for buying things I actually do not need. For not having a problem with being a little sloppy and wearing weird or colorful clothes. I do like my life to the extent that I feel bad for the friends who did not get a chance to experience the freedom of the old ages.

I enjoy the fact I am no longer blamed for browsing different sites on my computer, watching TV at 4:00 a.m., and sleeping or waking up late.

I enjoy the fact that I feel comfortable to sing and dance to the love songs of my teenage era, cry, and show my inner feelings. Though I sometimes forget things, but I have developed the attitude for not letting that bother me. It has become much easier for me to be positive and care less about what others think of me. I have become a humble and calm individual. And these have made my life sweet.

I used to pity myself for the past heartbreaks but now see that broken hearts are the source of strength, understanding, and learning to have sympathy and empathy. I am happy that I had the chance to live long enough to grow gray hairs and, most importantly, be able to see and enjoy the new members of family especially my beautiful grandchildren. I am grateful and thankful to notice things about the nature and its beauties that I could not notice before.

In sum, I feel I am finally myself. I now enjoy little things and realize how important they really are. I think that if I were to be born again, I would most likely choose the same path with all its twists and turns.

Views of a friend: I asked a friend who has crossed seventy and is heading toward eighty what sort of changes she is feeling in herself. She sent me the following:

1. After loving my parents, my siblings, my spouse, my children, and my friends, I have now started loving myself.

2. I have realized that I am not Atlas. The world does not rest on my shoulders.

3. I have stopped bargaining with vegetable and fruit vendors. A few pennies more is not going to break me, but it might help the poor fellow save for his daughter’s school fees.

4. I leave my waitress a big tip. The extra money might bring a smile to her face. She is toiling much harder for a living than I am.

5. I stopped telling the elderly that they’ve already narrated that story many times. The story makes them walk down memory lane and relive their past.

6. I have learned not to correct people even when I know they are wrong. The onus of making everyone perfect is not on me. Peace is more precious than perfection.

7. I give compliments freely and generously. Compliments are a mood enhancer not only for the recipient but also for me. And a small tip for the recipient of a compliment: never, never turn it down; just say, Thank you.

8. I have learned not to bother about a crease or a spot on my shirt. Personality speaks louder than appearances.

9. I walk away from people who don’t value me. They might not know my worth, but I do.

10. I remain cool when someone plays dirty to outrun me in the rat race. I am not a rat, and neither am I in any race.

11. I am learning not to be embarrassed by my emotions. It’s my emotions that make me human.

12. I have learned that it’s better to drop the ego than to break a relationship. My ego will keep me aloof; whereas, with relationships, I will never be alone.

13. I have learned to live each day as if it’s the last. After all, it might be the last.

14. I am doing what makes me happy. I am responsible for my happiness, and I owe it to myself. Happiness is a choice. You can be happy at any time, just choose to be!

15. I have taught myself to enjoy my own company.

This part appears all over the Internet with no reference to the original source. I decided to share it here and ask: why do we have to wait to be sixty or seventy or eighty? Why cannot we practice this at any stage and age?

• My life is mine alone, others may become a part of it, but I know that I need to live it my way and to my liking. I need to remind myself that a flower blooms without competing with other flowers.

• My Lord; Make my heart free of sadness, my body free of sickness, my days useful, my nights restful, and my home peaceful.

• I always wanted to find someone being obsessed with me and I did. It was my dog and I did enjoy it a lot.

• I have accepted the aging, but my body is having a hard time with it.

• Some laugh at me because I am different. I laugh at them because they are all the same.

LIFE

Life is like a door to which nobody has the key

Life is like a prison nobody can set himself/herself free

I tried to utilize my imagination hoping to find a way to see

But, ended up realizing that I am wasting my time I need to let it be.

—Reza Noubary

We Are All in the Same Boat

• Life is so ironic. It takes sadness to know happiness, noise to appreciate silence, and absence to value presence.

• Life is like a piano with black and white keys for sad and happy. We need both for sweet music.

• Life is like a roller coaster. It is your choice to scream or enjoy.

L IFE IS AN endless series of problems, some with no easy solution. Any solution directs you to the next problem. Lucky people have lots of problems but they know which ones to ignore. In short life with no problem is not real.

Life is like a journey on a train . . . with its stations . . . with changes of routes . . . and with accidents! We board this train when we are born and our parents are the ones who get our ticket. We believe they will always travel on this train with us. However, at some station our parents will get off the train, leaving us alone on this journey. As time goes by, other passengers will board the train, many of whom will be significant—our siblings, friends, children, and even the love of our life. Many will get off during the journey and leave a permanent vacuum in our lives. Many will go so unnoticed that we will not even know when they vacated their seats and got off the train! This train ride will be full of joy, sorrow, fantasy, expectations, hellos, good-byes, and farewells.

"A good journey is helping, loving, having a good relationship with all co passengers . . . and making sure that we give our best to make their journey comfortable. The mystery of this fabulous journey is: We do not know at which station we ourselves are going to get off.

"So, we must live in the best way—adjust, forget, forgive, and offer the best of what we have. It is important to do this because when the time comes for us to leave our seat . . . we should leave behind beautiful memories for those who will continue to travel on the train of life.

Thank you for being one of the important passengers on my train . . . do not know when my station will come . . . do not want to miss saying: Thank you (Source: Unknown). Here is more about life expressed as quotes:

• During our lifetime on the Earth, we work hard and accumulate many things, not realizing that at the end of the day, they can neither save us nor mean anything. Our kids would look at them as junk and try to get rid of them fast. The only thing of value that remains are the memories we made.

• In life, it is love that holds everything together.

• Life is a repetitive song. We all dance to it. Some find the rhythm; some do not. The music goes on, but we are forced to stop.

• And to finish in a fun note: I prepared to start my life on the right foot, but then I realized that I was a lefty.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Aging is like climbing; moving higher is rewarded by a better view.

Eyes of compassion, ears of tolerance, and the language of love are

the gold standards for an enjoyable and fruitful old-age life.

T HE STORY OF our senior years is both interesting and fascinating. A lot can be said about the experiences we go through and the changes we observe. As expected, there are a great deal of books written about this important subject. This book is a collection of short articles and essays about some aspects of life in general and old age in particular. The hope is to find a way to delight readers about this period of life and help them to see its beauties and its positive aspects.

Topics included cover both serious and funny experiences of growing old. They are partly the lessons I learned while living in the Middle East, Europe, and North America. For the ease of reading, the articles are presented independently from one another whenever possible at the expense of occasional repetition. Rather than a long list of citations at the end, sources are listed in the end of each article.

I must mention that the jokes presented here are mostly from what I have gathered during the last fifty years. Once a joke enters the public domain, they are more often than not modified. I myself frequently do this to make the jokes funnier or more relevant to certain groups, cultures, or nationalities. As such, it is almost impossible to know, find, or credit the original source.

Finally, some of the topics included in this book involve mathematics that may not be of interest to some readers. If you are not a math person, please ignore them, my apologies.

• Hating is a life-length defeat, a permanent wound.

• The whole world is inside me. I have no reason to feel lonely (Rumi).

• There is not only no easy way to success but no map to happiness too.

• To multiply your happiness, you need to divide it with others.

• Enjoy little things because one day you will realize that they were big things.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I no longer worry about who likes or dislikes me.

I have more important things to do.

Life goes on with or without me and you.

I SHOULD LIKE to express my profound gratitude to all people who have taught me something about life, love, world, society, and such. Hats off to my friend Steven Cohen for his help, support, and encouragement. I cannot fail to honor the memory of my mother, my brother, and sisters.

I should also acknowledge my colleague Bill Calhoun for the joint work regarding tennis cited here. Many thanks to our secretary Ashley Bilinski for her assistance.

I have greatly benefited from the Internet publications, especially for expository articles. For some of the quotes and jokes, I could not find any sources and decided to use the ones that were in public domains.

I am also glad that I do not remember all the stupid things I did in my younger years, and, more importantly, I did them before invention of the Internet so that there are no evidences there to worry about.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• I may be a slow walker, but still can walk hills and valleys of life.

• I am living my wondering years, I wonder where my glasses are?, where my phone is?, why did I come to this room?, and so many other things.

R EZA NOUBARY WAS born to an Azari family in 1946, the son of police officer who was addicted to both drugs and alcohol and an illiterate mother who was forced to marry at a young age.

He has lived a life of poverty, serious health issues, revolution, war, and the stress of moving from country to country. Today, he and his wife live in a beautiful and peaceful college town in Pennsylvania.

He has published several books in wide range of disciplines. The last two are Rumi in Rhyme and Khayyam in Rhyme.

The less drama and conflict I face

The more smile appears in my face

The more mindfulness and care takes place

The more love and romance in the space

—Reza Noubary

• I wish to be granted serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.—The Serenity Prayer

• Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.—Khalil Gibran

• The art of pleasing is the art of deceiving.—Luc De Claoiers

• Hard work beats talent when talent does not work hard.

CH 1

Funny Side of Senior Years

I am done with making my life complicated.

I want to relax and have fun.

Signs of Maturity

Y OU FORGIVE MORE, become more open-minded, respect and accept the differences, do not jump to conclusions and judge easily, prefer to be silent than to engage in a nonsense fight, enjoy the nature and family more, care about values more than the prices, avoid people who put you down and fights that cannot be resolved, walk away from people or things that poison your soul, etc.

Did You Know?

Death is the number-one killer in the world.

Life is sexually transmitted.

Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Men have two emotions: hungry and horny, and they cannot tell them apart. Health nuts are going to die from nothing.

In the ’60s, people took acid to make the world weird.

Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.

Remember that life is like a jar of jalapeno peppers. What you do today might burn your ass tomorrow. Do not worry about old age; it does not last that long.

If you give a person a fish, you feed them for a day. But if you teach a person to use the Internet, they won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.

Finally, be like weather and pay no attention to criticism.

Things You May Have Noticed

1. The sport of choice for the urban poor is basketball; for maintenance employees, it is bowling; for supervisors, it is baseball; for middle management, it is tennis; and for corporate executives and officers, it is golf.

2. Rabbits jump, and they live for 8 years. Dogs run, and they live for 15 years. Turtles do nothing, and they live for 150 years. Exercise is overrated.

My Mother Used to Say

If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning. You better pray that will come out of the carpet. Because I said so, that’s why. Keep crying, and I’ll give you something to cry about. You’ll sit there until all that spinach is gone. Appreciate the job well done. Do not call the speech you hate the hate speech.

Lessons

It is not what you look at; it is what you see. It is not the price of your belongings; it is their value. It is not the size of your house; it is how you feel in it. It is not how long you live; it is how you live. It is not what you leave behind; it is how you will be remembered.

About Life

Life is a repeated cycle of getting lost and then finding yourself again. There are many smaller cycles within that cycle where you get lost to a smaller degree and then remember yourself again. Sometimes you do it to yourself on purpose, consciously or unconsciously. Every time you get lost it is so that you can learn something or experience something from a different perspective.

—Jay Woodman

Happiness

True happiness needs discipline and control of the active mind

It is a wisdom/virtue of having the ability of see while you are blind

No happy life is possible without experiencing some pain and defeat

The word happy is not meaningful without sadness of some kind.

—Reza Noubary

A Poem from an Alzheimer’s Patient

Do not ask me to remember,

Don’t try to make me understand,

I’m confused beyond your concept,

I am sad and sick and lost.

I can’t help the way I’m acting,

Can’t be different though I try.

Please don’t fail to stand beside me,

Love me ’til my life is done.

—Owen Darnell

A. Quotes about Old Age

1. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.—Tom Stoppard

2. As you grow older, if you do not move you would not move.—Yvonne Dowlen

3. Age is something that does not matter, unless you are a cheese.—Luis Buñuel

4. Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.—Benjamin Franklin

5. Middle age is when you are sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it is not for you.—Ogden Nash

6. Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.—Victor Hugo

7. None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.—Henry David Thoreau

8. We do not stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.—George Bernard Shaw

9. Age is not how old you are but how many years of fun you have had.—Matt Maldre

10. I’ve reached the age where my brain went from ‘You probably should not say that’ to ‘What the hell, let’s see what happens.—author unknown

11. Age is just a number that changes depending on who’s asking.—author unknown

12. Growing old is mandatory but growing up is optional.—Walt Disney

13. The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.—Lucille Ball

14. I am 59 and people call me middle aged. How many 118 year old men do you know?—Barry Cryer

15. As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer.—Robert Quillen

16. People say that age is just a state of mind. I say it is more about the state of your body.—Geoffrey Parfitt

17. For the first half of your life, people tell you what you should do; for the second half, they tell you what you should have done.—Richard J. Needham

18. You know you are getting old when everything hurt. And what does not hurts does not work.—Hy Gardner

19. I tell my kids to respect me because I finished school and university without calculator and Google.—Reza Noubary

20. In childhood, we yearn to be grown-ups. In old age, we yearn to be kids. It just seems that all would be wonderful if we did not have to celebrate our birthdays in chronological order.—Robert Brault

21. Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life.—Kitty O’Neill Collins

22. It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.—Andy Rooney

23. You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.—George Burns

24. There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.—Sophia Loren

25. You do not stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.—George Bernard Shaw

26. By the time you are 80 years old you have learned everything. You only have to remember it.—George Burns

27. The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you will grow out of it.—Doris Day

28. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?—Satchel Paige

29. People ask me what I’d most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit.—George Burns

30. "Those who think they have no time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have