Baby talk was not allowed in my family. My mother didn’t approve of people bending over a baby carriage and cooing and talking gibberish.

A school teacher of merit, she believed in young children being taught proper English. I am sure that if she were around today she would be appalled at the way old people are spoken to as well--the supermarket clerk addressing a customer with grey hair in condescending tones and greetings more appropriate for young children. It is as if old people were from another planet. No wonder that in the movie "Cocoon" older people wanted to escape from this earth in a space ship.

Either it is expected that you need help out with your groceries or if, like me, a customer is dressed in jaunty attire you are ignored as your back stresses out just lifting each purchase out of the grocery cart at the checkout stand. There appears to be no happy medium.

In the extreme, there are others who make fun of those who can no longer ambulate on their own. I once sat in the front row at a comedy club waiting to take my turn on open mike night when a comedian on stage said, “I have always wanted to trip an old lady using a cane to walk across the crosswalk.” I was incensed and cried out, “Don’t you ever try that on me, young man.”

Before the evening was over I am sure that many of the insensitive wannabe comics were very happy when I left early.

Others placate us oldies by saying such things as, “You don’t look a day over 75.” Never did I ever think I would consider this a compliment but in my late eighties I must take any compliment I can get. I have always been thought at least five or 10 years younger than my chronological age.

So when my doctor told me that in my eighties I should sign the no resuscitate order if my heart stopped I tried to convince her that really I am more like a 75 year old. I hate to be a statistic. What if I am one of those eightyish old “ladies” who won’t be a vegetable when resuscitated? What would I be losing out on if I signed?

True, my descendants would get their inheritance earlier but I would miss that trip around the world or maybe a chance to see a woman in the Oval Office.

In the middle of this reverie I was brought to attention by a fellow in the grocery line mumbling something about old people getting too much cholesterol from butter. Don’t you hate it when old people have to take the blame for their own infirmities because they didn’t eat this or that or because they ate junk food all their lives? Even when I was young and got a cold I got no sympathy.

I was asked if I had gone to school without my coat on. While I was managing my husband’s health care for almost four years I never caught a cold so I must have been doing something right.

Just as I had resigned myself to my elderly fate in a youth oriented society, I overheard a salesclerk come from the stockroom of the shoe department saying, “Here’s just the shoe for you, sweetie.” I explained that no one but my husband calls me sweetie and I want to keep it that way. Later a friend explained that people from the South and certain parts of the Midwest call everyone sweetie.

So in my 89th year of life I need to distinguish between a putdown and cultural conditioning without malice intended. I’m learning something new every day and that’s a good thing.

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who can be reached at gnkunkel@comcast.net or 206-935-8663.