Children love to disclose their ages. They even take pride in counting portions of years.
 Asked how old she is, a preschooler will reply four and a half. She clearly feels boastful about the half part.
Of course, they have better reason than adults to value the extra six months. After all, for them this stretch of time comprises a large proportion of their time on earth, exactly one-ninth for that four-and-a-half-year-old.
For their part, parents commonly welcome those extra six months and sometimes celebrate the half-year as if it were a whole one. Recently, I visited the living room of neighbors who were toasting their six-month-old daughter.
Young people, after becoming adolescents, value the birthdays that will allow them to drive, to vote, and, last of all, to drink legal beer.
Once adolescents become adults, however, they commonly become less ready to disclose their age. By the time they become middle-aged, adults generally feel loath to reveal their age. Sometimes they resort to artifice in order to conceal that vital statistic.
Incidentally, the latter cannot fool me. I have a directory ─ and so could you ─ that tells the year of birth of virtually every resident in my populous city. This makes me a dangerous man in the eyes of some age-concealers.
When old age sets in, many Americans change their approach radically. Instead of taking pains to conceal their numerical age, they often begin to boast of it. It’s as if a key unlocked a bundle full of secrets and everyone now has access to its contents.
The coming New Year will mark this breakthrough for me. The numerals 2008 relate neatly to the year of my birth, 1928. I am now free, not only to acknowledge being in my 80th year of life, but to take pride in it.
Already, a mysterious new process has begun to take place inside me. Difficult to describe, it feels like an arrival, a release, and an achievement, all wrapped up together.
The arrival suggests coming to a new stage of life. August of the year 2008 will bring my 80th birthday. Already I am taking hold of this reality or, more appropriately, it is taking hold of me.
The release comes with not having to observe certain social restraints that have kept me in check until now. It has become easier to accept certain disabilities, for example. And not being the smartest guy in the room, or the most successful.
Achievement is probably the wrong word to describe passage into the 80th year. For me, it is more a gift received than an accomplishment managed.
Yes, I exercise every day and take some care about the food that sustains my life. However, so did many of my age peers, along with friends, relatives, and neighbors who, to my deep regret, have died before me.
Survival is shrouded in mystery. But it now describes my life. Thankfully, I have become a survivor. Many threats could have killed me but it has not yet happened. I’ll try to let you know when it does.
Is 80 the old 50, as some optimists claim? I much prefer to think of it as the new 80. Fortunately, many of my age peers enjoy the same vigor that I have managed to sustain thus far.
Another phenomenon of this ascent to year number 80 offers a welcome surprise. People, especially the young, treat me differently.
They not only offer their seats in the subway and on buses. More subtly, they look at me differently and show a new and unaccustomed tolerance and patience with me.
At times, these differences have their downside. Sometimes without realizing it, people can be condescending as if to say, “You’re old, we have to lower our expectations of you across the board.”
But this distorted approach to age remains rare in my experience. The younger people that I encounter on my daily path are almost invariably respectful and polite.
“You know the wrong people,” critics will perhaps respond. Perhaps, but I plan to keep expecting the best of others.
I have always enjoyed making friends in other generations. The young people of today are a source of endless interest and variety.
Do my younger friends see us elders as their future selves? Probably not; but neither do they seem to see us as a race apart.
I have never been shy about asking for help when I needed it. But being in my 8oth year gives me new freedom to do it. Why should faux independence force me to shovel my own snow?
So the New Year 2008 promises yet another set of experiences in what has become a surprisingly long life. Some of these experiences will surely prove undesirable. But I will try to cope with them, while relishing the benefits brought by the passage of time.

      Richard Griffin