That ‘awkward age’: Adventures of a super-fit senior at the gym

As I enter irrevocably into that 7th decade of my life, I find myself constantly reminded (to my continual frustration) of how difficult and often quite exasperating it is to be a healthy & fit septuagenarian (as opposed to an unhealthy, unfit one).

Let me give you some background here. When I was a senior in high-school I weighed about 155 pounds and stood 6 feet tall. Today, as I approach my 73rd birthday, I weigh 157 pounds and stand 6 feet tall. In my closet is a pair of Levis jeans that I wore as a senior; I can still wear those same jeans without any effort at all (although they are now merely a curiosity to remind me of former happy daze of youth).

In an age of rampant morbid obesity (largely due to over-the-top deficits in portion-control restraint) I must be considered some sort of fluke. Further, as an early adherent of Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s advocacy of running and the fitness benefits accrued therefrom, I’ve been exercising all of my adult life (which is ironic, because in high-school I absolutely hated running and all forms of vigorous exercise). Later, after entering into my cardiovascular & pulmonary professional work, I became quite a proponent of healthy lifestyle habits (including non-smoking, meal portion control and regular cardiovascular exercise). Later still as an adult, having failed to understand the need for muscular development in adolescence, I became a regular visitor at whatever gyms were accessible. The result of all this was that I developed into a lean, physically fit individual who appreciated good health habits.

What has a lifetime of such concerns therefore done for me, as I become a virtual geezer (age-wise, at least)? It seems to have made me into something of a strange anomaly among my ‘senior (hate that word, actually) peers, for they just don’t quite know how to deal with me.

The best evidence of this is found in our local ‘California Family Fitness’ gym, where I put in a daily round of muscle (weight) work and aerobic exercise (running), along with a widely varying age-range of both young and older individuals from the surrounding neighborhoods. But let me explain…

As a fully-equipped, red-blooded male (the product of a father who was 69 and still shooting 'live rounds' when he produced a living, breathing, newborn homunculus of what had earlier been merely a twinkle in his eye: me) who has aged extremely well, but who was also raised to be a courteous, polite and considerate person by my parents, I sometimes find it difficult to interact (meet their expectations) appropriately with others I meet at the gym.

Despite my age, the fact that I am modestly buff in my 7th decade presents a palpable challenge to all ages among these gym peers.

Older women there who are typically waaaay out of shape and struggling valiantly to maintain a vestige of their youthfulness (beset in most cases with the usual sags and physical desolation that old age and an over-abundant menu encourages) disregard me entirely (as if I weren’t even there). Older women who are in much better shape and who clearly make a serious effort to stay fit and trim regard me with suspicion (probably because I don’t look anything at all like most overweight, flabby men of my age) and keep their distance. Younger women, who all look rather gazelle-like in their tight-fitting Spandex leggings, try so assiduously to ignore me that it is almost painful (since I’m clearly way out of their age group, despite being in great shape) to experience this.

And since I have always been a friendly, polite person my entire life, I unconsciously smile without reservation and say ‘hello’ (not to excess naturally, but that is the social norm I think), this prompts all these lovely, younger ‘gazelles’ in the gym to think that I’m hitting on them when I say hello; this is a response that typically includes a healthy dose of studious avoidance and/or intense preoccupation with whatever music their smartphone is playing while they work out. To say that being automatically relegated to this ‘non-person’ status is frustrating and annoying is an understatement.

I find myself fighting the urge to give these self-absorbed people a lesson in civics and explain that saying 'hello' to a female doesn't mean that someone has devious intents; it's merely, after all, a way of politely acknowledging the presence of others in one's close proximity. Back in the day it used to be called 'good manners'. Today it seems to reflect the mass phenomenon of others being so narcissistically 'stuck' on themselves that they reflexively fail to differentiate between common courtesy and sexually insinuative come-on lines.

As for my male gym peers, the fact that I am lean and fit (despite the gray beard) seems to transmit a signal that I MAY be gay! Perish the thought. This response probably isn’t helped by the fact that I bicycle over to the gym each day and simply continue exercising in my Spandex bicycle shorts. And as many are probably aware, nothing spooks 'manly men' more than another male who’s in great shape who doesn’t wear the de rigeur baggy, floppy, shapeless shorts affected by most members of the righteous testosterone brotherhood these days, and any male who dares to wear Spandex shorts. When the ‘reactee’ is an older member of the crowd, that anxiety seems to be amplified, from my observations.

So, there you are: the young women think I’m a dirty old man trying inappropriately to be a ‘player’, the older women are suspicious of me, regarding me as someone who may prey on old ladies, and the men all view me as a possible gender deviate. How frustrating is that? And all because I stay in excellent shape for my age. That said, I can safely state that not a single one of my close friends (or even distant ones, for that matter) hews to the same rigorous lifestyle standards I do. They’re all uniformly declining years before their time!

Believe me, there are many times when I reflect on the fact that it might just be better to let myself go entirely and turn into the sort of good old, safe stereotype society thinks everyone should conform to (i.e. an overweight, pot-bellied, gray-haired old geezer on his last legs). It would be so tempting to totally disregard good eating and health habits, put on weight and turn into the sort of couch-potato that a preponderant number of older people become in our age of TV-socialised de-conditioning and materialistic laxity.

Since all my scrupulous health & fitness concerns of a lifetime appear to have garnered for me is an unspoken but still evident blanket exclusion from most contemporary social circles, what’s the use? Meh!

I guess the answer to that rhetorical question is that I owe it to no one or no thing other than my personal medical heath to remain as far from the treatment end of the hospital and/or clinic as I can. After all, when I retired from the cardiopulmonary medical biz some years ago, I resolved to never, if I were possibly able to, end up on what we medical people used to call the ‘other side of the bedrail’ (i.e. the patient side). As one enters into true advanced age, the object of life become a game of trying to cheat death as much as possible (or at least avoid debilitating health conditions as assiduously as one may). After all, in today’s mean culture, being sick is still a fate to avoid at all costs, not to mention being gawdawfully expensive.

Still, it sure would be nice to be able to smile and say ‘Hi’ to someone without being viewed as a possible predator and deviant miscreant, as well as not be eyed suspiciously as a ‘DOM’ geezer trying to hit on women waaaaay younger than my age group. As for my male peers, I guess all I can do is feel sorry for them with all their corporeal and psychological extra baggage and abnormal, obsessive projections of perceived homosexuality (probably reinforced by that great American religious paranoia about ‘abnormal’ or deviant sexuality that so many straight-arrow, Christian ‘believers’ are possessed by).

Beyond that, what? Beats the hell out of me, but it’s certainly a far lonelier world when one has to run one’s completely scrupulous, honestly intended interactions with others through all these paranoia-induced filters!

As if life weren’t complicated enough?! To use a phrase Schultz’s Charlie Brown character used quite often in that cartoon strip, “Good grief!”