I’m a baby boomer. I fall into the dreaded “over 60” throw-away category on survey forms, but I don’t feel old. Even back when I was putting my “x” next to the 18-24 year-old bracket, I remember observing that 90 per cent of aging seems to be rooted in attitude and lifestyle.

So, as I said, I don’t feel old. Or at least I didn’t until I ran into an opinionated four year old a few weekends ago while walking my Chihuahua-Papillon pup.

“Can I pet your dog?” asked the raven haired cutie. “Sure. Just let her smell your hand first,” said I, extending my own arm toward Muňeca’s highly attuned scent detector. The curly head politely stooped to comply, simultaneously offering a muffled comment, “…gettin’ old.”

“Her getting old,” I thought he had said, in the charming manner of preschool speech patterns. “Oh, she’s about eight,” I replied.

“No. Yer gettin’ old,” he corrected.

“Oh,” I exclaimed. “How come?”–totaling forgetting that  sometimes less information is better.

“Because yer bones stick out to yer skin,” he explained patiently.

“Well,” I mustered through a pained smiled, “how very kind of your to point that out!”

To state the obvious, the child was clearly not critiquing my lower body when this exchange took place. It must have been my gnarly, 60-something hands that inspired him, upon close encounter with same, to say out loud what a more inhibited, mature human being would keep to himself. And I must admit that the awful phrase has been ringing in my skull ever since. It even replays in my head at night as I am drifting off to  sleep.

So, I’ll say it again: I do not feel old. I compare pictures of my grandmother and myself at various stages in life and feel very much a part of the blue jean generation. No housedresses and orthopedic shoes for my crowd. We are the “Forever Young” beneficiaries of a post WWII boom in the economy and health care and food production. Blessed. That’s what we have been–those of us fortunate enough to be checking off that “over 60” box on the many forms we encounter in retirement.

Still, that my “bones stick out to [my] skin” bugs me. Is it vanity? Partly. But it’s also a matter of not wanting to be labeled.

Does anyone out there have experience with the procedure that transfers fat from the thigh to other areas of the body? I’m just curious, is all.