Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 27th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

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This was originally posted on August 27, 2014.

Age is Just a Number

Last month, one of the WordPress Daily Prompts said “age is just a number” and then asked whether it’s a number I care about or ignore.

I responded to the prompt with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek post about the wonderfulness of senior discounts. Don’t get me wrong; senior discounts are great. But I avoided answering the question.

What I am finding out is that, while age may just be a number, it is also a label. It labels me as part of a group. I’m a Baby Boomer. I’m a Gen-Xer, a Gen-Yer, a Millennial, a Gen-whatever.

I’m a child. I’m an adolescent. I’m a young adult. I’m middle aged. I’m a senior citizen. My age categorizes and classifies me as something. But is that really what I am? Is that all I am?

Okay, so based upon my age, I actually am a “senior citizen.” But what does that tell you about who I am? What I believe? How I’m supposed to behave?

One blogger on whose posts I comment frequently was blown away when he found out how old I am. He had no idea that I wasn’t around his age — and he’s a whole lot younger than I am. I mean, seriously, a lot younger.

That made me feel good, but at the same time, it saddened me. I guess the expectation is that because I’m a senior citizen, I’m supposed to act and sound and even write my age — simply because I am that age.

But while my hair may have turned gray and then fallen out never to return to its former glory, and while my vision isn’t as good as it used to be, and while my hearing is not as acute as it used to be, and while I have wrinkles where my skin was once smooth, and while I can’t run as fast or sleep as well or eat all the crap I used to be able to eat without repercussions, in my mind I don’t feel a day older than I did when I was a “young adult.”

But because of my age, because I’m identified as a senior citizen, people’s expectations of me are different from those for people who are a different age than am I.

And I guess, just as I do with my tinnitus, my failing hearing, and my balding head, I will just learn to live with it.

Age is what it is — a label to which people attach meaning.