Looks are not important once you’re sixty,
You are free to be as ugly as you please,
Everyone expects you to be wrinkly,
And have a figure drifting to your knees.
Grey hair is a pensioner’s obligation,
Thin and in a style that’s out of date,
Nobody expects you to be sylph-like
Until you reach a scraggy eighty- eight.
Nobody believes you have opinions,
Or the right to tell them what you think,
Nobody’s surprised your speech is slurry
Whether it’s from ageing or from drink.
Once sixty, your achievements are as nothing
Anything you did no longer counts,
Nobody believes you are a thinker,
Though you might have degrees in vast amounts.
Suddenly you don’t have any value,
No intellect, no worth, no sex appeal,
People don’t talk to you but about you,
Uncaring about how this makes you feel.
Suddenly it’s as if your life is worthless,
And you are hanging round on borrowed time,
Everyone expects you to wear Cardies
And baggy pants, another fashion crime.
But all this stuff can be a liberation,
For you’re no longer bounded by the rules,
So go on, you’re allowed to be outrageous,
And damn the tiny-minded, ageist fools!
Lynne Joyce 07.12.2009 (62nd birthday)