My friend’s wife was recently diagnosed with pre-leukemia.  No treatment needed for now, the doctor said.  

When she asked about treatments if things got worse, the physician said, “At your age …”

“At your age.”  When you hear these three simple words, you just know that something is about to happen, sometimes good, often bad. Which is which? That depends on where you are in life.

“At your age” and its close cousin, “When I was your age,” begins to come into the picture about as soon as a baby realizes there’s a world outside the crib and wants to see more of what that is.

Control And Resistance

And then it starts. When you are young, “at your age” is aspirational, but the aspirations are someone else’s. Adults getting in your face insisting you should be better than you are by acting older than you do.

Making fart noises on your arm, eating with your hands, pencil-poking the kid sitting in front of you in class, grunting at your mother when she tells you to take out the garbage:

At your age, you should be better.

And all those percentiles.  “At your age you should be reading at Level …” or weigh this much or be that tall.

Or the always-popular “When I was your age, I was already …”

Keep in mind here that I’m not talking about dysfunctional families. I’m talking about highly functional ones where kids love and for the most part obey their parents but also know that “at your age” is a railroad crossing light warning that the Morality Express is on the way.   

That’s the first stage — control and resistance.

And then you are liberated. Free at last.

Liberation lasts roughly from high school graduation until, I don’t know, say 45. Age-talk evaporates as a guide, a morality tale or an excuse for someone older to say you can do better. 

You’ve passed the drinking age and the age of consent. Best of all, if you now have children of your own, you can do onto them about “at your age” just as it was done onto you in the same well-meaning but annoying way.

Even if you are 38, single, and still living at home, your parents are likely to hold back on morality tales. “I know we don’t like it, Mary Jo, but he’s an adult now.”

“At your age” is out, you think. But it comes back in different, surprising ways that had never entered your mind.  

Control and resistance morphs into persistence.

Doctors Deliver The News

For me the surprise came at a routine physical. Pay attention because I’m pretty sure this is not going in the direction you think it is.

The doctor did the usual medical stuff until he came to the routine exam for testicular cancer. He didn’t bother.

When I asked him why not, he said, “at your age you don’t need that exam. You’ve aged out.”

Great news! One less cancer to worry about. Besides the testicle exam involved doing intrusive things “down there” where it hurts and triggers memories. That’s why a dude never forgets the name of the wise-ass show-off who threw the no-look pass that clobbered him in JV basketball.

Now it’s not your dad, vice-principal of discipline or youth group adviser saying, “at your age.” It’s everyone.

Still, something gnawed at me about this freedom from fear. It was my first experience of aging out. “At your age” here meant that I was too old for something.

Aging? Me?

I was once again part of the age-standard game but in a very different, disconcerting and portentous way.

Age-talk comes bounding back, not necessarily dramatically but definitely, pervasively. Sometimes in sort of pleasant ways: “You don’t look your age.” “You’re doing really good for a person your age.”

Senior discounts, senior tax breaks, the golden chance to do things without having to give a crap about what other people think.

Sure, all good (though truthfully, I think that getting a tax break simply because someone is old is a boondoggle).

But these benefits and perks all come with an unavoidable tariff. Every one of those goodies is a reminder that “at your age” is heartily, heavily and centrally back in the picture. Now it’s not your dad, vice-principal of discipline or youth group adviser saying, “at your age.” It’s everyone. It hovers in the atmosphere.

When our neighbor’s little boy had leukemia, the treatment was all-out from the beginning. A well-developed protocol, statistically excellent prognosis, and the assumption that at his age life was just beginning.

Childhood leukemia. He recovered. See?

It took a long while to diagnose my friend’s wife’s condition, which is more common in older adults.

The doctor was reassuring. He told her that she needs no treatment now. Just go out and live your life, he said.

What if things got worse? Forget about a bone marrow transplant, a common but tough treatment. At your age, the doctor told her, you’re too fragile.

At her age.