A holiday question: How old is too old?

In the spirit of Christmas past and future, and in light of the age of our likely two major candidates for president in 2024, I thought it a good day to ask: How old is too old? (Forgive me if I've asked this before.

I'm old and occasionally repeat myself.) I have a personal stake in the answer. I'm now a spritely 77. I feel fit, I swing dance and salsa, and I can do 20 pushups in a row. Yet I confess to a certain loss of, shall we say, fizz.

Joe Biden could easily make it until 86 when he'd conclude his second term. After all, it's now thought a bit disappointing if a person dies before 85.

"After 80, it's gravy," my father used to say. Joe will be on the cusp of the gravy train. In 1900, gerontologists considered "old" to be 47.

Today, you're considered "youngest-old" at 65, "middle-old" at 75, and at 85, you are a member of the "oldest-old." Three score and 10 is the number of years of life set out in the Bible. Modern technology and Big Pharma should add at least a decade and a half. Beyond this is an extra helping.

Where will it end? There's only one possibility, and that reality occurs to me with increasing frequency. My mother passed at 86, and my father two weeks before his 102nd birthday, so I'm hoping for the best, genetically speaking.

Yet I find myself reading the obituary pages with ever greater interest, curious about how long they lasted and what brought them down. I remember a New Yorker cartoon in which an older reader of the obituaries sees headlines that read only "Older Than Me” or “Younger Than Me.” Most of the time, I forget my age.

The other day, after lunch with some of my graduate students, I caught our reflection in a store window and, for an instant, wondered about the identity of the short old man in our midst.