There is a stigma attached to growing older? Why? Isn’t everybody growing older every day? And why would grown-ups encourage such a peculiar prejudice by pretending to be younger than they are and rejecting any remaining respect, dignity and courtesies that may be offered them?

Some of my self-stigmatized contemporaries once asked me why I had consented to appear on the cover of the AARP magazine. "Because Seventeen didn’t ask me," I told them.