“How silly,” I thought to myself. “Why do these elders want to make such fools of themselves? It’s grotesque to watch a man of 101 running a sprint as slowly as a tortoise, and women awkwardly attempting the long jump.”

This was my first impression while beginning to watch a new film entitled “Racing Against the Clock.” Made by Bill Haney, whose company, Uncommon Productions, is based in Waltham, this documentary shows older people from around the country energetically competing in athletic events under the auspices of the National Senior Games Association and USA Track and Field.

Those first impressions of mine, some of them perhaps not without anti-growing-old feelings still lurking in me, soon gave way, first, to respect and then, to admiration for what these late-life athletes are accomplishing. Yes, they may be endowed with physiques extraordinary for their age, but their athletic success is also owing to hard work and single-minded dedication to an ideal.

And they are not as rare as one might think. Across the country some 200,000 elders compete, with 30,000 of them qualifying for tournaments held in each state. For last year’s international competition in Puerto Rico, over 2700 contestants came from 78 countries.

The five women on whom the film focuses have all overcome obstacles that could have stopped them cold. Margaret, age 82, lives in a retirement home where her spirit and enthusiasm for life draw mixed reviews from other residents.

Even her own kids ask: “When are you going to stop this?” But she insists: “It has increased my self-confidence tremendously.” And she considers exercise like this as especially important for women of her generation.

Her doctor has recommended surgery to fuse vertebrae in her back but she has resisted. With surgery, she would have to give up her activities on the track and that, for her, would be a terrible deprivation.

A woman called Phil, who at 57 has an altogether extraordinary physique, competed at last year’s international meet in 10 different track and field events. To watch her do the pole vault with marvelous grace is a memorable event in itself. “Ah, competition, I love it,” says Phil. “I still want to see what I can get out of my body.”

Pat, almost 80, has the medical distinction of being the oldest stem cell transplant recipient ever. She won a gold medal last year at the world championship in Puerto Rico. Her service as an acolyte in her cathedral parish also means much to her and is a sign of how seriously she takes the spiritual life.

At age 50, Jackie qualifies as a relative youth in this group. She grew up on a sharecropper farm in the south, one of 13 children. Years later, as a single mother, she had to overcome homelessness and depression.

By now, however, she has managed to turn around her own life and that of her family. She weeps joyfully as she tells of her children praying for her well-being. As a sprinter, she won a gold medal in the world championship.

And, finally, Leonore, 76, attempts to break the pole vault record. At age 21, we learn, she escaped across the border of East Germany, risking being shot by the guards. To her delight, she succeeds in winning the gold at the Puerto Rico tournament.

Filmmaker Haney skillfully draws viewers into the lives of these five women. Their faces, showing the signs of age as he zeroes in on them, reflect determination to reach the demanding goals they have set for themselves.

While they take competition seriously, these women feel strong bonds of love and compassion with those against whom they compete. They exchange frequent hugs and kisses as they congratulate those who have run, jumped, or hurdled with them.

At the same time, these strivers know how to put failure in perspective. “Not today, too many jumps today,” says Margaret with resignation after falling short of her expectations. “You know right away when it’s no good,” she adds.

Associate producer Debra Longo, in her mid-30s, was at the Puerto Rico events. “You couldn’t help but be impressed,” she says of the entrants. Smilingly she adds: “I want to be like them, but maybe not pole vaulting.”

Bill Haney finds the story’s main value in its potential for inspiring others to discover “the things they can do to add joy to their life.” As he sees it, the five women show how “you can reconstruct your life so as to give yourself pleasure.”

“Racing Against the Clock” has been chosen for the Boston Film Festival. It premieres on September 16th, at 8:30 PM, at the Boston Common Theater. Other showings, probably on television, are planned in the near future. Meanwhile, copies in the DVD format are available for $15 at (781) 647-4470.

Were I a movie critic, I would give this film four bright stars.

Richard Griffin

As I turned the ignition key of my car one evening last week. a cardinal (not the church variety) dove down to the roadway just ahead, dabbed at a small branch lying there, and then just as quickly ascended back to its perch.

You may not consider this news significant, gerontologically, politically or otherwise; but this sighting offered my first-ever view of a cardinal up close. Unlike some of my friends and relatives, I do not bird. I admire, but do not imitate, the enthusiasts who flock to Mount Auburn Cemetery at dawn in search of rare migrants and lifetime firsts. This glorious red creature is a free, unearned gift to me and my neighbors.

And a magnificent gift it is. Even the patron saint of birders, John James Audubon, was carried away by cardinals. Back in the early 19th century, he wrote: “In richness of plumage, elegance of motion, and strength of song, this species surpasses all its kindred in the United States.”

One of my birding relatives points out that cardinals are not particularly unusual in these parts. They are backyard birds, and they mark out their territory in the early spring with a characteristic song.  Only male cardinals are red (perhaps because of the carotenoid pigment in their food), and females are brown and inconspicuous. This system may be useful to the species, but we members of another species may well find it unfair.

Our own cardinal has been entertaining our neighborhood all summer, usually at a safe distance from local cats and squirrels. At intervals of less than a minute, he repeats his vigorous melody over and over, and we crane our necks to find him. Often I spy him sitting on a high wire, animated by his own brand of electricity. From there, he often flies to a branch of a tall tree nearby from which to send the same song.

The cardinal may claim pride of place with his high-wire act, but he faces almost daily musical competition. Emily R, next door, is a mezzo-soprano, and her songs are even more glorious than his: Bach cantatas for the Swedenborg Chapel, or light-hearted hymns like “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.”   The music pours forth through the open window, and the cardinal is not at all shy about singing along. He provides the same service, or challenge, for Emily’s voice students, as they practice Elgar’s Sea Songs or a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song.

This informal polyphony may be one of the reasons why the cardinal has chosen our street. In deciding to summer here, he must have flown over more elegant neighborhoods, and some with more graceful trees. Perhaps, discerningly, he judges wealth by the richness of local music, or even by the shouts of children as they play in their front yards or careen down the street on small bikes.

How far did he fly to get here and how long did it take him? Did this eight-inch creature elude major threats to his well-being along the way? Did he migrate from Florida, like snowbirds of our own species? Or did he tough it out through the long New England winter?

You have to be a bit of a nut to ask these questions, of course. Normal people content themselves with what is, rather than wondering about future possibilities and alternative scenarios. But later life affords the luxury of raising issues not normally part of one’s mental universe.

I write on a rainy day but the change of weather does not deter our cardinal.

The windows of our house are open, and his song mingles with “Morning pro Musica” and the latest news from Washington. We can even hear him over more forbidding noises. Only a few feet away from his wire, workmen are blasting air-powered nails into wooden beams, constructing a stylish addition to an old house for a young family.

It is impossible not to feel heartened at the sound of this intrepid music. It is true that it certainly provides no cure for the bad news pouring out of the radio each morning: the slaughter and starvation in Darfur, the Americans and Iraqis trapped in violence, the new frisking policies on the MBTA, and the truly depressing expenses and low blows of the current presidential campaigns. No birdsong, however sweet, can make this aging neighbor forget these events.

At the same time, the song is there, as well as the courage and energy that make it possible. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins found ecstatic delight in the flight of a falcon on a windy morning: “My heart in hiding/Stirred for a bird,–the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”

I am glad for our own bird, and for the daily melody it shares with us.

Richard Griffin

During my days as a Council on Aging director I remember getting calls from people worried about an old person who was neglecting her own wellbeing. She may have been looking malnourished, for instance, or have been letting her small apartment fill up with old clothes and other junk. The caller, often a family member or neighbor, would feel anxious about the harm the elder was doing to herself and wonder how to prevent it.

Home care providers, social workers, and other professionals who help elders in their homes are very familiar with situations like this. And they are usually resourceful in knowing what steps to take that will improve the situation. Massachusetts stands out for having strong networks of services designed to meet needs experienced by older residents.

For more than two decades, this commonwealth has benefited from a protective services law that requires a wide variety of professionals to report incidents of abuse of people over age 60. These so-called mandated reporters include medical personnel, police officers, firefighters, licensed psychologists, and many others.

These service providers must report to a designated elder service agency if they suspect physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, as well as caretaker neglect and financial exploitation.  These forms of abuse occur at the hands of a third party and, regrettably, have been found to be dismayingly widespread.  Last year, the state provided almost ten million dollars to fund protection for elders subject to these kinds of abuse.

Now, by virtue of a new law passed this year, abuse and neglect inflicted by oneself has been added to the categories of abuse that must be reported. Passage of this addition to the law comes in response to a multi-year effort by an organization called Mass Home Care, along with other advocates. I owe information about this to Al Norman, the long-time director of Mass Home Care and an outstanding champion of elder citizens. His monthly newsletter comes filled with important data about legislative matters and other matters affecting older people.

Norman describes the addition thus: “The new self-neglect provision is defined as the inability of an elder to meet his/her essential needs for food, clothing, safe and secure shelter, personal care supervision and medical care to the point where he/she cannot remain safely in the community without assistance.”

Though a larger number of people are expected to need attention this year, the legislature has underfunded the new program by a million dollars. That means hundreds of self-neglecting elders will go without needed services.

Still, even without adequate funding, many advocates feel happy about the extension of the law to include self-neglect. John O’Neill, for the past 25 years executive director of Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services, hails it as “another tool to help.”

“This gives us the ability to raise the question,” he adds in reference to situations in which elders appear to be neglecting their own basic needs.

However, I must confess feeling some qualms about the wisdom of mandating by law the reporting of what could be expressions of elders’ free choices about their lives. People sometimes make assumptions about the mental balance of their elders when the latter merely choose to act in an unconventional manner. We must be careful to respect their right to do so.

I am supported in this cautionary note by a veteran advocate of elders, a skilled and compassionate person for whom I have high regard. She also feels the need to safeguard older peoples’ autonomy and independence. After all, we elders have the same right to neglect our own wellbeing that people of other ages have. It can amount to others poking their noses into our business if our freedom to be ourselves is judged as needing intervention.

Realistically, however, many of those whose cases will be reported do suffer from illness or disability that restricts their ability to recognize their own best interest. They may have some form of dementia, making it difficult to know what is happening to them. In such instances, reporting their situation seems clearly to be doing them a service that can make a crucial difference in their lives.

In any event, reporting how things are for the elder does not settle the case. Rather, it is the first step in a procedure in which others will be involved, others who are required to be sensitive to the rights of the older person. These protective service personnel must weigh carefully the circumstances and respect the person’s dignity and autonomy.

Provided that those who “raise the question” exercise prudence and respect the often fine line between independence and mental impairment, I will welcome the new legislation. Ideally at least, it is another sign of our belonging to a community of caring. Even though putting it in legal terms can make this caring seem bureaucratic, it really does give expression to our living in a commonwealth of concern.

Richard Griffin

This past June marked for me a reunion with a woman whom I had last seen 57 years ago. We happened to find ourselves at the same table among alumni who had accepted our college’s invitation to an outdoor lunch.

When I heard her name, an event in my personal history, long since gone, rose to my consciousness. So did a series of rapid might-have-beens, some of them creating a trajectory for my life radically different from the actual one.

Jean and I first met when our two families introduced us at the home of mutual acquaintances. Our fathers were professional friends, both of them Sunday Editors at Boston Newspapers, mine at the Post, hers at the Globe. Uncharacteristically for him, my father collaborated in this scheme to bring together two young people who were about to enter the same college that fall.

That evening has imprinted itself on my memory so deeply that I can recall the emotional details. If the purpose of the evening was to stir in me interest in this young woman, it worked marvelously well.

She seemed to me alluring, charming, and responsive. Her intelligence and poise impressed me, as did the relationship she had with her parents. Instinctively, I felt this to be a friendship that would notably enhance my experience of college. She was a person I wanted to be in touch with, starting in my freshman year.

The encounter on that evening, thoroughly enjoyable and promising as it was, turned out to be the last time that I ever saw Jean until this past spring. Not once did I attempt to contact her during the rest of the time we spent as college students. Never did we meet or find ourselves in class together.

For my part, the main reason for this failure to follow the gracious action of our two families was my own immaturity. I did not dare to take the initiative to suggest we get together, for fear I would be refused.

At that time I was shy in a way that would surprise friends who have known me only in middle and later life. Simply calling a young woman on the telephone was enough to make me cringe, again because I envisioned being turned down.

I remember spending weekend evenings in my college room, lonely for company, but fearful of making a fool of myself if I tried and failed of acceptance. To some extent that fear applied to my approach to fellow males, but much more to members of the other gender.

As I came to analyze the situation later, the main issue was uneasiness focused on my arm. Having suffered a birth injury that resulted in my left arm being noticeably shorter and weaker than my right one, I felt this physical distortion to make me unattractive to women.

Just as I used to cringe at seeing my bodily profile reflected in department store’s three-way mirror, so I imagined women would feel about association with me. Irrational as this assumption may sound, it was enough to limit severely my social initiatives in those days of later adolescence.

This history was also complicated by my growing sense of being called to a religious vocation that would require celibacy. Half-way through my college career, this feeling led to my entering into a monastery-like setting that prepared me for eventual ordination to the priesthood.

In brief summary of a complicated interior situation, this double rationale on my part explains why nothing ever came of a meeting that seemed to promise more. And it explains why 57 years would pass before Jean and I met again.

How she feels about the situation, I do not know. In conversation this spring we nostalgically recalled the meeting so long ago but drew no moral from it. Undoubtedly, it looms as much less important for her than for me. She did not have so much emotional baggage, I strongly suspect, as did I.

My chief judgment on this event is appreciation of living long. Having done so myself has given me the scope to change radically. The decades have allowed me to mature, to put behind me the basic insecurities of the past. No longer do I fear rejection because of the defects that I recognize in myself.

Later life has brought me an acceptance of my bodily self far different from that of earlier days. Now I feel disability to be standard for human beings, something we are all heir to. Those of us who do not have disabilities early on manage to acquire them later. And I have discovered that women friends, when they notice mine, do not mind at all.

Being so far removed from the foolishness of youth gladdens me now. Granted that I am hardly free of foolishness in later life, it strikes me as different and less threatening. The misgivings that prevented me from pursuing a friendship so long ago no longer have such a hold on me, thanks to time and the startling changes it brings.

Richard Griffin