I too have been offered seats on the subway, but only when I am using my cane. And I revel in it! I highly recommend carrying a cane to any oldster, whether needed or not, on the subway. We are elders (not elderly, with its negative implications) and deserve the respect we have earned over our decades. Other benefits of cane carrying include cars deferring to us as we cross the street and being offered to go to the front of the line at the supermarket. I even was offered priority entry to get a Covid vaccine when they first were available and lines were long. The benefits far outweigh the few negatives, such as little children asking “why is he carrying a cane” and their parent shushing them for being impolite.
In our society, which frequently casts old people aside, the reminder that we have earned and deserve respect and consideration is a badge of honor!
I think you are right. Maybe it is better to see the kindness meant and to celebrate the desire to help. I am rethinking what happened to me recently along these lines. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this and your experience with NYC trip. I am sorry you had to deal such an over-the-top subway seat offeror.
My experience may be only marginally relevant. I am 71 with dwarfism (3' 10", the average height of a six-year-old). The built world can be quite inconvenient. When I am at the grocery store, it seems like I am not eating right because everything on my list is sitting on the top shelf. I used to resent having to ask anyone for help to the point of foregoing anything on my list that I couldn't reach on my own. I have come to see things differently. Sometimes I believe the person I ask really needs at that moment to do something to help another person for whatever reason. My need is just the occasion.
I love this perspective. I am 5'9" and always happy to leap to the aid of people needing things from high shelves. As I told one (much older than I) woman straining to reach something from the top shelf, my height might as well be good for something! And yes, helping another person can leave a good feeling all day.
I went to the movies last week to see One Battle After Another (finally) and the cashier automatically rang up a senior ticket. I wanted to protest, but I also wanted the discount. What a dilemma.
Senior discounts can be confusing because they variously begin at 50, 55, 60 and 65, depending on who is giving the discounts. I speak as an avowed enemy of senior discounts, at least when I was in my 30s.
I've had this same experience in Chicago and New York, when well-meaning people inadvertently, well, kindsulted me. Like you, I was appalled. Can't you see how VITAL I am?
Which reminds me of when, maybe 10 or so years ago, I was doing the Chicago triathlon. As I was walking to the swim start, I saw a guy walking alongside me who had to be between 75 and 80 years old. (I was probably 50 at the time.) "You're an inspiration," I said to him. His look was more "I'm going to kick your ass" than "thank you."
The first time a younger person offered me his seat was on the Tube in London. I was 68, dead tired, and deliriously grateful. I told him he was "my first." He looked vaguely alarmed and puzzled. But I love your dilemma. Last spring (age 72) in Barcelona, I was gratified that my 50- years-unused Mexican Spanish was understandable to the 20 somethings sitting in the "old-person-reserved seats" on the train from the airport to downtown. I said a polite version of "Are you crazy? I am 72, was on a plane overnight, and you are NOT going to look at your phones in the old people seats, chicas!"
If you let your hair go gray they solicitously offer you their seat. It’s like flipping a switch. They mean well and were properly brought up, so I suppress my annoyance that they ASSUME rather than ASSESS. I’m almost 80 but still often chose to ride standing because I sit too much for work (freelance science editing). I still take karate classes (50+ years now) that would leave many of those young people gasping and groaning, and my body language probably reflects it, but body language is something people DO NOT SEE. I used to fantasize about grabbing the overhead bar and doing a pull-up and inverted somersault just to shock them out of their stereotypes, but I’d probably lose my grip and break my neck, and it would serve me right for being a show-off. … (That was true throughout my 70s. Now that my knees are getting arthritic i’d occasionally welcome a seat, and of course that’s when nobody offers. OK, boomer. 😂)
"I used to fantasize about grabbing the overhead bar and doing a pull-up and inverted somersault just to shock them out of their stereotypes" - this is the Subway TikTok I want to see!
Haha, I had the EXACT same experience on the NYC subway a few weeks ago! Only the person offering me a seat was a young man, and he didn't say anything--just waved me into his seat. I took it. I am 63, gray, and notox.
Later I asked my daughter, age 21, "Do I look like so old that a young person needs to give me their seat on the subway?" She refused to answer.
You put this as a callout, and it bears repeating: "Then I wondered about times I may have been overly solicitous, or in some way condescending, toward those senior to me." ALL THE TIME (me, that is, especially looking back at my 30-, 40-, 50-year old self). "Oof. Not a good look. Lesson learned." <<<Is it, though? How about when you talk to an 80-year-old? I am not fully cured, thanks, baked in systemic ageism.
I hear you loud and clear, Sari! Your subway scene = ouch. I think about this all the time (and I'm 71). In fact, my Substack tomorrow is about this very topic. I'll email you a sneak-preview link for your amusement. Loving these letters. Keep 'em coming.
I second your notion for a Hudson Valley subway! (Like that will ever happen.) I'm an hour south of Kingston and I see so many great events there and in Rhinebeck, but the Taconic State Parkway at night and in the winter? THIS - struggling to drive at night - is the worst part of aging. (And I'm older than you.)
I probably would have taken the seat, but that’s most likely because at the times I’ve really needed a seat, people have (intentionally, I suspect) ignored me. That includes when I was pregnant (with twins!) and, more recently, when I was moving through the City in a boot (broken toe). And it’s the young men who are the worst when it comes to this, IMHO.
Jesus....I wanted to heart this ONE HUNDRED MILLION BAJILLION TIMES!! And then heart it some more!! I think a lot about age in terms of how I feel INSIDE and the way I can be PERCEIVED. Sometime I feel like the gulf is so so wide, there's no connection. But so many times -- as you put is, Sari -- I also feel like there is a version of every single age I've ever been inside me. I am also really aware here in the city as I walk about how young most people are around me. (Though, is this because, I, like too many others, often don't SEE people closer to my own age of 62? I don't know. When I'm in Paris, I feel like I DEFINITELY see people my age and much older ALONG with other people --- am I just paying a different sort of attention?). I've had an experience like you had once in the train as well. Thank god the person did it push it as much as your "Good Samaritan" (I say sarcastically) did. I mean, I remember being that age and seeing someone MY age and just not comprehending that, WERE I LUCKY ENOUGH, I, too, would be that age. And there was nothing different between the two but just way more interesting life experiences than the younger one had. But it's hard when our culture really does gear itself towards younger people -- and it's especially felt in larger cities. When I'm upstate which is my permanent home, I'm just not aware of it, even though I actually come in direct contact with people of MUCH more varied ages than I do down here. And, so, ironically, I sit in the city with a badly fractured ankle that is newly healing and will have to wait until I get back upstate where I will feel more like me than I do down here. Something I never thought I'd feel.
I love this post. I spent 4 months in Evanston, Il. My place was across from an L stop so I spent many happy hours traveling to and fro various parts of Chicagoland. There are signs on the L urging passengers to give up their seats to olders. It was humbling how many times kind mid-westerners acquiesced their seats for my benefit. I finally started accept their gracious offers.
Oh god, something like the subway incident happened to me at the dog park. I went to pick up a chair to bring over to my friends, something I do often without even thinking about it. A woman who could only have been a decade or so younger said to me, "I've got it." I protested with a smile. To which she said, "I'm paying it forward. I'm going to be you someday." I was floored. So floored that I watched her carry the chair to where I was headed and march off with a wave and a smile. My friend, who was 85, was laughing her ass off.
Going to see stand-up was my (Rosh Hashanah) New Year's resolution! So we went to see Alex Edelman at a synagogue here in Baltimore last week. It was a tiny space -- we were like 20 feet away from him. Maybe 200 people. He was phenomenal. Apparently, his HBO and Broadway show about going to a meeting of white supremacists in Queens got him a few haters. He was flanked by two Baltimore City policemen the entire time. We had to go through metal detectors. Roads were closed and a helicopter flew overhead the entire show. Kind of freaked me out - but he's brilliant. I hope Ophira Eisenberg comes here! We've got security!
If she had just offered once and took no for an answer I feel like I would not really be that offended but the fact that she kept insisting was ridiculous! I would have been really annoyed too. I also sometimes worry I could be annoying to others older than me (I live in a 55+ building) when I offer help with a carrying a package or holding a door open but usually they say yes, please and thank you...
I too have been offered seats on the subway, but only when I am using my cane. And I revel in it! I highly recommend carrying a cane to any oldster, whether needed or not, on the subway. We are elders (not elderly, with its negative implications) and deserve the respect we have earned over our decades. Other benefits of cane carrying include cars deferring to us as we cross the street and being offered to go to the front of the line at the supermarket. I even was offered priority entry to get a Covid vaccine when they first were available and lines were long. The benefits far outweigh the few negatives, such as little children asking “why is he carrying a cane” and their parent shushing them for being impolite.
In our society, which frequently casts old people aside, the reminder that we have earned and deserve respect and consideration is a badge of honor!
Yes! I like this perspective. Thanks, Jeffrey.
I think you are right. Maybe it is better to see the kindness meant and to celebrate the desire to help. I am rethinking what happened to me recently along these lines. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this and your experience with NYC trip. I am sorry you had to deal such an over-the-top subway seat offeror.
My experience may be only marginally relevant. I am 71 with dwarfism (3' 10", the average height of a six-year-old). The built world can be quite inconvenient. When I am at the grocery store, it seems like I am not eating right because everything on my list is sitting on the top shelf. I used to resent having to ask anyone for help to the point of foregoing anything on my list that I couldn't reach on my own. I have come to see things differently. Sometimes I believe the person I ask really needs at that moment to do something to help another person for whatever reason. My need is just the occasion.
Thank you for sharing, Jon.
I love this perspective. I am 5'9" and always happy to leap to the aid of people needing things from high shelves. As I told one (much older than I) woman straining to reach something from the top shelf, my height might as well be good for something! And yes, helping another person can leave a good feeling all day.
Totally.
I went to the movies last week to see One Battle After Another (finally) and the cashier automatically rang up a senior ticket. I wanted to protest, but I also wanted the discount. What a dilemma.
Ha! When I bought my bus ticket that morning, the clerk asked if I was eligible for the senior discount. (Five more years, baby.)
Senior discounts can be confusing because they variously begin at 50, 55, 60 and 65, depending on who is giving the discounts. I speak as an avowed enemy of senior discounts, at least when I was in my 30s.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/1986/04/30/complaint-on-senior-discounts-dismissed/
Ha ha. And yes, so arbitrary.
I've had this same experience in Chicago and New York, when well-meaning people inadvertently, well, kindsulted me. Like you, I was appalled. Can't you see how VITAL I am?
Which reminds me of when, maybe 10 or so years ago, I was doing the Chicago triathlon. As I was walking to the swim start, I saw a guy walking alongside me who had to be between 75 and 80 years old. (I was probably 50 at the time.) "You're an inspiration," I said to him. His look was more "I'm going to kick your ass" than "thank you."
I've had teenagers offer me seats on NYC buses, but not on subways. Teenagers really have trouble distinguishing older people' ages, I think.
Now that I wrote that, I realize that maybe I mistakenly thought these people were teenagers!
Lol.
"Kindsulted" is genius.
And as a runner, age 63, I get this all the time: OMG YOU'RE STILL RUNNING [at your age]? WOW!
I only wish I could kick their ass. :)
The first time a younger person offered me his seat was on the Tube in London. I was 68, dead tired, and deliriously grateful. I told him he was "my first." He looked vaguely alarmed and puzzled. But I love your dilemma. Last spring (age 72) in Barcelona, I was gratified that my 50- years-unused Mexican Spanish was understandable to the 20 somethings sitting in the "old-person-reserved seats" on the train from the airport to downtown. I said a polite version of "Are you crazy? I am 72, was on a plane overnight, and you are NOT going to look at your phones in the old people seats, chicas!"
Love it. Thanks, Janet.
If you let your hair go gray they solicitously offer you their seat. It’s like flipping a switch. They mean well and were properly brought up, so I suppress my annoyance that they ASSUME rather than ASSESS. I’m almost 80 but still often chose to ride standing because I sit too much for work (freelance science editing). I still take karate classes (50+ years now) that would leave many of those young people gasping and groaning, and my body language probably reflects it, but body language is something people DO NOT SEE. I used to fantasize about grabbing the overhead bar and doing a pull-up and inverted somersault just to shock them out of their stereotypes, but I’d probably lose my grip and break my neck, and it would serve me right for being a show-off. … (That was true throughout my 70s. Now that my knees are getting arthritic i’d occasionally welcome a seat, and of course that’s when nobody offers. OK, boomer. 😂)
"I used to fantasize about grabbing the overhead bar and doing a pull-up and inverted somersault just to shock them out of their stereotypes" - this is the Subway TikTok I want to see!
Don't tempt me!!
Haha, I had the EXACT same experience on the NYC subway a few weeks ago! Only the person offering me a seat was a young man, and he didn't say anything--just waved me into his seat. I took it. I am 63, gray, and notox.
Later I asked my daughter, age 21, "Do I look like so old that a young person needs to give me their seat on the subway?" She refused to answer.
You put this as a callout, and it bears repeating: "Then I wondered about times I may have been overly solicitous, or in some way condescending, toward those senior to me." ALL THE TIME (me, that is, especially looking back at my 30-, 40-, 50-year old self). "Oof. Not a good look. Lesson learned." <<<Is it, though? How about when you talk to an 80-year-old? I am not fully cured, thanks, baked in systemic ageism.
Love this post and your writing, thank you!
PS I hadn’t ever heard “notox” before. Good one.
Notox is a good one, right? I didn't make it up, I read it ... somewhere? Credit TK!
It’s really good!
Thank you, Tish, and for sharing your similar experience.
I hear you loud and clear, Sari! Your subway scene = ouch. I think about this all the time (and I'm 71). In fact, my Substack tomorrow is about this very topic. I'll email you a sneak-preview link for your amusement. Loving these letters. Keep 'em coming.
Oh, wow! Yes, a relatable experience for women of a certain age. Glad you’re enjoying these, Deborah.
I second your notion for a Hudson Valley subway! (Like that will ever happen.) I'm an hour south of Kingston and I see so many great events there and in Rhinebeck, but the Taconic State Parkway at night and in the winter? THIS - struggling to drive at night - is the worst part of aging. (And I'm older than you.)
Oh, I hate driving at night. And the Taconic is the worst at that time of day, or in bad weather.
Kate, are we cousins?
Maybe long lost, though the last name is spelled differently....
I probably would have taken the seat, but that’s most likely because at the times I’ve really needed a seat, people have (intentionally, I suspect) ignored me. That includes when I was pregnant (with twins!) and, more recently, when I was moving through the City in a boot (broken toe). And it’s the young men who are the worst when it comes to this, IMHO.
I was just so shocked by the offer, and what a big deal she was making of being a good samaritan. Lol.
Jesus....I wanted to heart this ONE HUNDRED MILLION BAJILLION TIMES!! And then heart it some more!! I think a lot about age in terms of how I feel INSIDE and the way I can be PERCEIVED. Sometime I feel like the gulf is so so wide, there's no connection. But so many times -- as you put is, Sari -- I also feel like there is a version of every single age I've ever been inside me. I am also really aware here in the city as I walk about how young most people are around me. (Though, is this because, I, like too many others, often don't SEE people closer to my own age of 62? I don't know. When I'm in Paris, I feel like I DEFINITELY see people my age and much older ALONG with other people --- am I just paying a different sort of attention?). I've had an experience like you had once in the train as well. Thank god the person did it push it as much as your "Good Samaritan" (I say sarcastically) did. I mean, I remember being that age and seeing someone MY age and just not comprehending that, WERE I LUCKY ENOUGH, I, too, would be that age. And there was nothing different between the two but just way more interesting life experiences than the younger one had. But it's hard when our culture really does gear itself towards younger people -- and it's especially felt in larger cities. When I'm upstate which is my permanent home, I'm just not aware of it, even though I actually come in direct contact with people of MUCH more varied ages than I do down here. And, so, ironically, I sit in the city with a badly fractured ankle that is newly healing and will have to wait until I get back upstate where I will feel more like me than I do down here. Something I never thought I'd feel.
This resonates Susan! In Kingston, and in my professional life, I have so many friends and acquaintances of all ages, that sometimes I forget my age.
I love this post. I spent 4 months in Evanston, Il. My place was across from an L stop so I spent many happy hours traveling to and fro various parts of Chicagoland. There are signs on the L urging passengers to give up their seats to olders. It was humbling how many times kind mid-westerners acquiesced their seats for my benefit. I finally started accept their gracious offers.
Thank you, Liz. 💕
Oh god, something like the subway incident happened to me at the dog park. I went to pick up a chair to bring over to my friends, something I do often without even thinking about it. A woman who could only have been a decade or so younger said to me, "I've got it." I protested with a smile. To which she said, "I'm paying it forward. I'm going to be you someday." I was floored. So floored that I watched her carry the chair to where I was headed and march off with a wave and a smile. My friend, who was 85, was laughing her ass off.
Omg.
Going to see stand-up was my (Rosh Hashanah) New Year's resolution! So we went to see Alex Edelman at a synagogue here in Baltimore last week. It was a tiny space -- we were like 20 feet away from him. Maybe 200 people. He was phenomenal. Apparently, his HBO and Broadway show about going to a meeting of white supremacists in Queens got him a few haters. He was flanked by two Baltimore City policemen the entire time. We had to go through metal detectors. Roads were closed and a helicopter flew overhead the entire show. Kind of freaked me out - but he's brilliant. I hope Ophira Eisenberg comes here! We've got security!
Nice!
Great parable on the ageism we carry inside too. And I appreciate the reminder that live performance is worth getting off the couch for.
Thanks, Jean!
If she had just offered once and took no for an answer I feel like I would not really be that offended but the fact that she kept insisting was ridiculous! I would have been really annoyed too. I also sometimes worry I could be annoying to others older than me (I live in a 55+ building) when I offer help with a carrying a package or holding a door open but usually they say yes, please and thank you...
Yes, subtlety would have made the situation bearable.