#skareboarding

This is a clip of Neal Unger, a skater in his 60s who only took up skate boarding in his 50s. You can google him and get plenty of gifs about him. 

 I  stumbled over him on the net, because I had recently asked my friend Jeff (59), what he thought he felt too silly to do at his age, and his response was:   “...so many things I would feel silly doing now. Skateboarding for sure. We still have an old skateboard of mine we got from my dad, must have been built it in 1976 or so.... my daughter likes to go for a spin on it every now and then, so I jump on it, too. Can still do a couple of 360s, yes! But I wouldn't actually GO skateboarding. And the things I used to do on my old Stingray bike (all the rage during the 60s/70s before the advent of BMX bikes), like jumping garbage cans, etc. Definitely wouldn't be seen doing that.”

Mind you, Jeff still goes surfing and he loves track racing on his fancy motorbike, so I found his response pretty interesting, because we obviously still have the same desire as we did when we were youngsters, but as 50plus-people, we now seem to feel that certain things may be inappropriate at our age. Mostly of course because physically we have changed.  But also because younger people want us to behave “old”. They look at us funny when we still go dancing at night or show up at a rock concert, don´t they? Neal Unger was quoted with “I decided to live my childhood for the rest of my life”. Seems to be working for him. He is also a surfer, and wrote the book “Dude Logic”,  appealing to anyone having qualms with growing older. Do check out this radio channel: GROWING BOLDER and Unger´s interview on their podcast,

Jeff told me that he isn´t old, because he is still working. So for some, “oldness” means being retired. I am sure even the already retired would not necessarily agree. Everyone has their personal answer to age, but one thing is for sure: