For the last two weeks, I have been haunted by a sentence of six words. They were spoken unwittingly by a guide at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The person reporting these words, in an essay published in The New Yorker, is the writer Donald Hall. A former poet laureate, he is one of America’s most distinguished literary figures.

I have felt a kind of kinship with him ever since discovering, after the fact, that we were classmates in college.  Not knowing him in those days may be counted as yet another of my young manhood’s failed opportunities.

Now 83, Hall lives in a New Hampshire farmhouse that has been inhabited by generations of his family. Burdened by disability and illness, he now spends much of his days looking out the window and contemplating the surrounding landscape.

His visit to Washington had no trivial purpose. He was going to the White House to receive the National Medal of Arts from President Obama.  His fellow medalists included Meryl Streep and pianist Van Cliburn.

At the National Gallery, Donald Hall moved through the rooms in a wheelchair pushed by his friend Linda. They stopped to admire a carving by Henry Moore, whom Hall had known well, and about whom he had written a book.

Eager to be helpful, the guard, a man in his sixties, came over and told them the name of the sculptor. Hall and his friend were tempted to mention the friendship and the book, but decided that to do so might embarrass the guard.

The two visitors went off to the cafeteria. On their return two hours later they see the same guard. He asks Linda how she enjoyed her lunch.

Next, in the writer’s words, “he bends over to address me, wags his finger, smiles a grotesque smile, and raises his voice to ask, ‘Did we have a nice din-din?’”

Such events and others, for Donald Hall, are part of the winter landscape of old age. He writes about it, not without irony: “It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life.”

Recalling the episode with the guard, he adds: “People’s response to our separateness can be callous, can be good-hearted, and is always condescending.”

Clearly, the guard’s words were painful. They would offend almost anyone; but, for a master of language like Hall, the indignity had to be particularly sharp.

When they patronize the old, many people are unaware of what they are doing. They may even think they are being nice. Most likely, that’s the way the guard felt, with his physical gestures, his use of the plural, his louder tones, and, at the end, his baby talk.

Virtually all of us who can boast advanced years have faced similar treatment. I do not have to use a wheelchair or even a cane. Yet people sometimes condescend to me because I am old.

What strikes me about the guard is his own age. You would think that his sixties would have made him realize how close he himself is to being old. But even from his vantage point he seems not to have grasped any vision of elders as his future self.

Few young people can ever envision themselves as old, and that’s a fact elders may have to live with. Our juniors should perhaps be granted the privilege of focusing on their own stage of life.

But they need to remember that we are not an alien species. To respect us is to respect what they will be one day, if they are lucky.