Well, speaking as someone who is 71 (and can’t really believe it), because it *is* old age.
I mean, here I am at 27:
And here I am today on the left:
I’m just plain old. Still in pretty good shape — about the only thing I can’t do that I once did is ski, because I’m afraid my back wouldn’t hold up to the bending and twisting. But not as strong, not as quick, needing more sleep (and having more trouble sleeping), and of course wrinkled and even balder than I was back then.
But what I wasn’t expecting was the huge difference between 65 and 85. To me, old people were old people — they had gray hair and wrinkles and aches and pains. But what I found instead was that at 65, I was able to do just about anything, while at 85, some people can’t even get off the floor if they fall.
So yes, we’re old, but there’s a difference between old and old old.
The other thing is that we’re in better shape than our parents and grandparents were at our age. We understand the importance of exercise and not smoking and healthy eating. Miraculous drugs like statins have slashed cardiovascular mortality and disability, cancers that were once a certain death sentence can be cured, hips replaced. Both of the old guys in the picture above have had cancer, and both of us survived it. I had cataract surgery and my vision is crystal clear; it’s a quick outpatient operation these days, while in my grandfather’s day it was major surgery, and before that it was blindness.
So we’re staying younger longer — but at the end of the day, we’re still old — just becoming old old a decade later than we once did.