This is 67: Award-Winning Journalist Tom Junod Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"I’m 67 years old and I just finished my first book. It’s a dream come true and it taught me so many things about my life, my talent, and my endurance. It seems an amazing gift to me."
From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”
Sometimes you’ll find responses from writers, musicians, and artists you’ve heard of—like Kate Pierson, Neko Case, Rosie O’Donnell, Ava Duvernay, Jerry Saltz, Lucy Sante, Ricki Lake, Hilma Wolitzer, Elizabeth Gilbert, Judith Viorst, Cheryl Strayed, Deesha Philyaw, Chloe Caldwell, etc.—but more often it will be people (of all ages) you haven’t heard of, Humans of New York-style. (Check out all the Oldster interviews…)
Here, award-winning journalist—and now memoirist—Tom Junod responds. (Tom and I are both from Long Island, and we are both graduates of SUNY at Albany, seven years apart!) -Sari Botton
PS If you’re enjoying the work I do here at Oldster, please consider supporting it by becoming a paid subscriber. 🙏
In his career as a writer for GQ, Esquire and now ESPN, Tom Junod has won two National Magazine Awards, an Emmy, a James Beard Award, and the Jenkins Medal for Sportswriting. But he is proudest of writing stories that people have kept reading many years after publication, such as his 9/11 story The Falling Man and his profile of Fred Rogers, which served as the basis of A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks. His first book, a memoir about his father entitled In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, was published on March 10.
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How old are you?
67.
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
45. Because I’ve been lucky with my health, and I haven’t retired. Right now, there’s nothing I did at 45 that I can’t do in my present incarnation. One day, I guess, I’ll think I’m still 67.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
I don’t think I am young. I’m just lucky I feel young. When I see people onscreen who are meant to look old—that is, who are playing old characters—I sometimes turn to my wife and say, “You know, we’re older than them.”
In my mind, I associate myself with 45. Because I’ve been lucky with my health, and I haven’t retired. Right now, there’s nothing I did at 45 that I can’t do in my present incarnation. One day, I guess, I’ll think I’m still 67.
What do you like about being your age?
I’m 67 years old and I just finished my first book. It’s a dream come true and it taught me so many things about my life, my talent, and my endurance. It seems an amazing gift to me.
What is difficult about being your age?
The look on people’s faces when you say the number. Pity.
Also, I’ve lived long enough to see the world go against my wishes for it. The present political situation doesn’t just anger me. It breaks my heart, and calls into question all my optimistic American assumptions.
Ask people how they’re doing. That came to me by way of the former Pastor of the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church, Bill Grimbol. It’s an easy thing to do and also a powerful thing to do. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve gotten into just by asking that simple question—and I can’t tell you how many times people have seemed to be waiting to hear it and waiting to get the chance to speak. It just makes life better, yours, theirs, everyone’s. And it costs not a cent.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
When I was a young writer, Frank McCourt published his memoir, Angela’s Ashes, to great acclaim at the age of 68. I was happy for him. But I couldn’t help but wonder: “Why in the world did he wait until he was 68? I’ll never do that.” Well, I’m publishing my first book a month short of my 68th birthday. I guess I have the answer to my question.
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
I’m really good at skipping rocks. There is something almost defiant about skipping rocks in my late 60s. But my elbow has started to hurt.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
It has made me realize I need to do more to help people and to make the world a better place. Time is not my side.
When I was a young writer, Frank McCourt published his memoir, Angela’s Ashes, to great acclaim at the age of 68. I was happy for him. But I couldn’t help but wonder: “Why in the world did he wait until he was 68? I’ll never do that.” Well, I’m publishing my first book a month short of my 68th birthday. I guess I have the answer to my question.
What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
Last autumn, I went out to dinner with a bunch of high school classmates. Out of the dozen people at the table, I was one of the only ones still working. They talked about their lives—their travel, their cruises, their golf, their grandkids—and I realized that so many of my own stories were about work. My life sometimes sounds exciting, at least to me. But it doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as retirement!
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
When my wife Janet and I arrived in Atlanta in the early 1980s, we were in our 20s. We went out all the time, hung out in clubs, met new friends, had parties, discovered new bands (REM!!!!), all in a brand-new city that felt wide open. Life was rife with possibility. But I think you have to be careful about using the past tense in a sentence like that. Life is still rife with possibility. It will never not be rife with possibility. You just have to work harder for it.
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
My brother Michael is ten years older than me. He has taken great care of himself and you can see him doing one-handed pushups on his Instagram page, @beingfitat70plus.
My dear friend Robert Lipsyte is 20 years older than me. He’s a legendary sportswriter and pioneering YA novelist and he still goes to his office just about every day to write his cranky, funny, stinging and often tremendously moving essays and columns.
My brother Michael inspires me to take care of my body. My friend Bob inspires me to take care of my mind.
Last autumn, I went out to dinner with a bunch of high school classmates. Out of the dozen people at the table, I was one of the only ones still working. They talked about their lives—their travel, their cruises, their golf, their grandkids—and I realized that so many of my own stories were about work. My life sometimes sounds exciting, at least to me. But it doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as retirement!
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
I’ve had bad teeth all my life—I was sick a lot as a kid and my adult teeth came in stained and malformed. My father never stopped telling me to get them fixed. I never stopped resisting his advice. Finally they started breaking and I faced a decision: do I want to get my teeth fixed so late in life? But that wasn’t really the decision. The decision was: do I want to keep them or lose them? I decided to keep them, and now they sparkle.
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
I intend to resist being sorted by age and entering senior housing. Perhaps I will need the care, and have no choice. But there is a cost in freedom, and I want to keep that as long as I can.
What turn of events had the biggest impact on your life? What took your life in a different direction, for better or worse?
There are so many and so many of them are personal—meeting my wife Janet, adopting our daughter Nia, deciding to move South, and on and on. But becoming a writer changed everything. When I got my job as a writer in Atlanta Magazine in 1987, the first thing I did was go to the gym where I used to work out several nights a week and tell my friends there that they wouldn’t be seeing me anymore. It wasn’t that I decided not to exercise, not to stay in shape. It was that I decided to put everything I had into this opportunity. And that has never changed.
When my wife Janet and I arrived in Atlanta in the early 1980s, we were in our 20s. We went out all the time, hung out in clubs, met new friends, had parties, discovered new bands (REM!!!!), all in a brand-new city that felt wide open. Life was rife with possibility. But I think you have to be careful about using the past tense in a sentence like that. Life is still rife with possibility. It will never not be rife with possibility. You just have to work harder for it.
What is your number one regret in life? If you could do it all over again, what is the biggest thing you’d do differently?
There is a difference between wishing you had done something and regretting something you did. I wish I had lived in New York City for at least a few years; maybe one day, my wife and I still will. But just about every day of my life I regret bullying a classmate in 5th and 6th grade. I find cruelty intolerable, mine especially, and that was an enduring lesson for me.
What is high up on your “bucket list?” What do you hope to achieve, attain, or plain enjoy before you die?
A lot of times I discover what’s in the bucket after I do something, not before. Go to the screening of a movie that was made from a magazine article you wrote and starred an actor playing a version of yourself? Bucket list! Write my first book at 67? Bucket list! I figure I’ll just keep working and every once in a while I’ll reach in the bucket to see what’s there.
But there is something else. My sister died in 2022 of early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. If I do not follow her path and suffer her fate, my bucket list stands completed.
There is a difference between wishing you had done something and regretting something you did. I wish I had lived in New York City for at least a few years; maybe one day, my wife and I still will. But just about every day of my life I regret bullying a classmate in 5th and 6th grade. I find cruelty intolerable, mine especially, and that was an enduring lesson for me.
Is there a piece of advice you were given, that you live by? If so, what was it, and who offered it to you?
Ask people how they’re doing. That came to me by way of the former Pastor of the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church, Bill Grimbol. It’s an easy thing to do and also a powerful thing to do. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve gotten into just by asking that simple question—and I can’t tell you how many times people have seemed to be waiting to hear it and waiting to get the chance to speak. It just makes life better, yours, theirs, everyone’s. And it costs not a cent.
The trailer for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the movie based on “Can You Say Hero?” Tom Junod’s Esquire profile of the late Fred Rogers:
What are your plans for your body when you’re done using it? Burial? Cremation? Body Farm? Other?
My wife wants to be cremated. I want to be buried. I was just told I have no shot—“You’re getting cremated.” So cremation it is.
One thing I need to emphasize: I ain’t gonna work on Body’s Farm no more. I mean, not just no way. No freaking way.
My sister died in 2022 of early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. If I do not follow her path and suffer her fate, my bucket list stands completed.
How do you feel about dying? And what do you expect to happen to your “soul” or “spirit” after you die?
I hope I’m brave enough, good enough, to die.
I think dreams have taught us what will happen when we die. First we will be in our own dreams, then we will be in someone else’s. That’s life; so why shouldn’t that be death?
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
Without fear or favor.
Oh Sari, I wish, wish, wish you could have asked him to unpack this that he wrote in 2014: “Go to a party: There is simply no one as unclothed as a 42-year-old woman in a summer dress. For all her toughness, and humor, and smarts, you know exactly what she looks like, without the advantage of knowing who she is.” I was older than 42 when this was written and was so offended--I'm still offended given that I remember it more than 10 years later. It felt bad then and it feels worse now. I believe the mystery of a woman increases with age. Men on the other hand... Not to diminish all of his accomplishments, but this one passage ended it for Tom Junod and me.
A question I wish you would ask: What can’t you get enough of?