A question at airport security left me outraged

Someone said to me recently, “You know you’re getting old when the security guy at the airport asks you if you’ve got any hip or knee replacements before you go through the scanner.”

That happened to me for the first time a couple of weeks ago, so I guess I must have passed some kind of milestone.

He wasn’t asking anyone under 50. I felt outraged, even though I kept it to myself.

But why should I feel outraged? Age is something we can’t help, and it will creep up on everyone, if we’re lucky, one day. I wear every year as a badge of honour and good fortune.

In a healthy society, many of the “isms” are considered unutterable – sexism, racism, lookism, ableism.

But somehow it is always okay to be ageist. No one seems to get offended at jokes about grey hair, brain fog, false teeth and digital Luddism. Except the ageing themselves, of course, who may have none of those things.

You can’t call someone “fat” in the way you can blithely call someone “old”, or worse, “senior”. These days, if you have the misfortune of having an accident that gets into the papers, you will be labelled as “elderly” if you’re over 65.

Ageism never goes away because the people protesting it are old and therefore not taken seriously.

The ridiculing of older people by the young always amuses me, given it’s their future. Last week, I was reading a post on Blue Sky where the writer, obviously very young, was smugly claiming that no Baby Boomer knew how to download a VPN, or even what it was.

Well, honey, do I have some people for you.

I’m writing this on a cruise. Yes, according to the cliche, cruise ships are full of grey-haired old people playing trivia and shuffling about on their walking frames.

But this is an expedition cruise. Generally, people who go on expedition cruises need a level of fitness and agility to do the excursions, including jumping on and off moving Zodiac boats and trekking hilly terrain.

Looking at my fellow passengers, I would say a high percentage of them are over 70, with quite a few in their 80s. And, possibly, a couple of them may be pushing 90.

One woman, who goes on all the difficult hikes, appears to be in her late 80s. I won’t insult her by saying she is “sprightly”, another popular ageist term.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more intelligent, engaged and energetic group of people.

They have multiple devices and know how to use them. (The ship demands that all meals and excursions are booked on the app.) Who knows, they may even have VPNs.

‘When you can count the time you have left in years rather than many decades, it all becomes vitally precious.’

Scientists say there are two ageing milestones in later life: 60 and 78. But people who are truly alive, engaged in their life and the lives of others, have no age. Of course, they may not have many years left chronologically, but they are enjoying every moment of them. You never stop learning until you’re dead.

And that’s their superpower. When you can count the time you have left in years rather than many decades, it all becomes vitally precious. So, people focus on what’s important to them, which might include discovering places they’ve always dreamed of visiting. They have a heightened sense of what’s important and new energy.

I have no idea why this is something to be joked about. A bucket list is not a bad thing when that bucket is in sight.

But the negative stereotyping of older people is prevalent in the travel industry, starting at the security checkpoint. There’s the one-size-fits-all attitude to age you can find with tour groups and in other people-facing jobs – you’re going to be too frail to do adventurous trips, or you’re only listening to Rod Stewart or The Who.

It’s lazy and reductive.

And then there’s the sting of travel insurance. It becomes more and more expensive to travel, no matter how well you are, when insurers assess risk based on biological age rather than health.

One of the younger travellers on this cruise has her face five centimetres from her phone at all moments, including when she is eating meals. Majestic icebergs go by, and she doesn’t even notice them.

I’d consider her risk of smashing a knee while stumbling over a rock greater than that of any of her decades-older fellow travellers.

But it will be the older people paying the premiums.