Just for laughs: Old is gold; well, not exactly 

Age, they say, knows no barriers. It takes all people with equal animosity. And there can be no secret inheritance as far as the aphrodisiac for the fountain of eternal youth is concerned. Nor has all the science in the world enough knowhow to beat the scalp-scalder. Yet some people nurse little discretions against playing Mr Old Boots. 

Bob Hope, for one, did it: “I’ve found the secret of youth…I lie about my age,” he once said. And there’s many a woman who keeps the years at bay by lying away. So, when a woman tells you her age, try not to look surprised. 

Lady Ascot, in fact, made no bones about it: “I’ll never grow older than 52,” she said. “Even if it means my children become illegitimate.” But many have been caustic about women who axe their years and wax their youth. To quote Oscar Wilde: “One should never trust a woman who tells her age. If she tells that, she could tell anything.” 

Robert Frost’s sarcasm is even more telling: “Time and tide wait for no man,” he chided, “but always stands still for a woman of 30.” 

Yet the woppies of the nineteen-eighties were one generation who strove to get enough gold out of being old. Perhaps, they didn’t take cue from the age-old Chinese proverb: “Man fools himself – he prays for a long life, and fears old age.”