Dear Youth,
Pull up a chair. Yes, an actual chair. Not a gaming throne, not a standing desk contraption, not a bean bag that costs more than my first car. Just a chair. We need to talk.
I am on the threshold of my 60s, and transitioning into this stage of my life sounds like I am training for this, as if there will be a ceremony and a sash. There will be none of these. One day I was “experienced.” The next, I was “legacy.”
Legacy.
Do you know what that word means to someone who still knows all the lyrics to 1980s songs and can parallel park on the first try? It means you have been gently placed on a mental shelf somewhere between “archived” and “historical reference.”Let me tell you about the first time I felt the full weight of approaching sixty. I was filling out an online form and had to enter my date of birth. I scrolled. And scrolled. And scrolled some more. At one point I considered packing a lunch. When the drop down menu finally reached my birth year, I half expected a pop up that said, “Are you sure you are still with us?”
Then came the realisation that my college graduation was over 35 years ago. Thirty five. Some of your parents were learning to tie their shoes while I was learning to navigate adulthood with a questionable haircut and a Walkman clipped to my waistband. Yes, a Walkman. It played music from a cassette tape. Which you inserted manually. Which sometimes unraveled. Which we rewound with a pencil. A pencil, dear Youth. Not a charging cable.
The music of the 1980s is now 40 years old. Forty. The songs that once blasted from car windows while we felt immortal are now played on “classic hits” stations. Classic. As in ancient. As in museum adjacent. And speaking of museums, you have never held a floppy disk. You may have seen the icon that means “save,” but you have never actually saved anything onto a square piece of plastic that held less information than one of your selfies. You have never dialled a rotary phone and misdialed on the last number, forcing you to start again from the beginning. You have never felt the satisfying clunk of hanging up a receiver with dramatic flair. This is not your fault. But here is what I want you to understand.
We are not relics. We are not outdated software. We are not the human equivalent of a discontinued device. We are upgraded versions with extensive field testing. We have survived economic recessions, questionable fashion trends, heartbreak without texting, and news cycles that arrived once a day instead of every eight seconds. We built careers without LinkedIn. We maintained friendships without group chats. We raised children without Google. We know how to wait. We know how to listen. We know how to disagree without blocking someone. And yes, we sometimes squint at small fonts and ask you to show us how to reset a password. But we also know how to rebuild a life after loss, how to stretch a dollar, how to apologise properly, and how to keep going when “reinvent yourself” was not a motivational quote but a survival strategy.
So when you call us “old people,” try saying it with a little more reverence. When you refer to us as “legacy,” remember that legacy is not about being finished. It is about what continues. One day, sooner than you think, you will scroll endlessly to find your own birth year. You will hear a song from your youth described as “vintage.” You will explain to a baffled teenager what an iPhone 14 was.
And I hope when that day comes, someone looks at you not as obsolete, but as seasoned. Not as irrelevant, but as rich with stories. Not as slow, but as steady.
Growing older is not a glitch. It is a privilege. It is proof that we kept showing up. So dear Youth, borrow our wisdom. Laugh at our stories. Ask us questions. Teach us your apps. And please, for the love of dignity, increase the default font size.
With affection, resilience, sass, and zero patience for nonsense,
The 1960s Generation
FrogDiva Thoughts 