This is a thread for ILXORS IN THEIR 50's

Our cohort is few, but mighty.

abbott being a sexy cold war scientist

OH MY GOD WHY WAS I NEVER THAT

I remember Howdy Doody.

and i thought i was old for remembering leaded gasoline!

madonna, michael jackson, prince and ME -- i am now 50 and 1/2.

sept 1968 was like the gayest time to enter high school

everyone cool in those days were entering college

there is truth lurking here -- people in our sub-generation have a complicated relationship w/our older sibs, the 60s baby boomers. this usage of "gay" is uhm, anachronisitic, or something. (I entered HS in 72 FWIW.)

anachronistic! edgy, you mean!!1!

so is bimble part of this exclusive club?

I didn't expect to get shoulder and back hair this late in the game.

ha was wondering what you meant in the 40s thread

what's up y'all

had a cardiologist call me at 7am to cancel my appointment (snow)

this morning the dentist said that my teeth with metal fillings will all eventually need crowns; seems legit, the youngest of those fillings is 40+ years old

i went to the dentist for lots of work this past year, first time since forever, and it was all space aged nano whatever shit and i think the dentist and his assistant were legit smirking at my one old iron ore filling from when i was a teenager, fifty years ago, in an eastern bloc nation

oh hi, I'm 54 now

peeing takes a long time

backache is a thing

(knocks on wood)

As hinted above, I have a cardiologist now! My primary doctor, who has pretty amazing raw skills -- like hearing -- apparently, thought he heard a murmur in my heartbeat last month. GREAT!

It turns out I have an "unconcerning" prolapse which is a "2" (not a 3 or a 4), so it just has to be checked every year from now on.

Aging is a motherfucker.

all the best morbs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murmur_(album)#/media/File:R.E.M._-_Murmur.jpg

i am two years older than william hartnell in this picture :D

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1920x1080/p01hg14p.jpg

(obviously i have regenerated several times: also did not grow up in poverty etc)

He got paid five times more per ep than Anneke Wills was, to make up for the poverty stricken childhood!

what a feelin'

mainly feeling it in my lower back today

Rapidly approaching Sammy Hagar milestone.

Minutemen?

Can you hear me, Dr. Mu

Imagine my surprise

Just realized that the “ordinary guy” in Pavement’s “Stereo” is maybe a reference to “Dr. Wu.” I still got it!

Oh wait

I just went through all the tests you are supposed to do when you get to 50, only 7 years late.

Anyway, all passed 100%, so hey!

I guess that lower back pain is gonna go in the "what do you expect at yr age?" cart.

Thanks for reminding me. I just did the same with one test, the biggest of all, remaining to be done in the next few months. If the news is bad I will speed post my remaining backlog of screennames.

I was Big C diagnosed about five months after turning 50, so maybe i didn't get the other tests.

(i'm mostly OK now, just medicated)

He got paid five times more per ep than Anneke Wills was, to make up for the poverty stricken childhood!

― calzino

for two months and then he got sacked. quintessential "being in your '50s" experience tbh

Definitely another bummer about being in your 50s. If you lose your job, you can't necessarily bounce back. You might never have a salaried position again.

Definitely another bummer about being in your 50s. If you lose your job, you can't necessarily bounce back. You might never have a salaried position again.

HI DERE. Raise your hand if you have been rendered depressed, rudderless, and without direction because you've structured your life around a eight-hour, salaryman working schedule for so long that when you were inevitably disrupted out of your career you've become addicted to the anxiety and panic of not being able to focus. oops TMI

raises hand

in my case it took several years to work through the trauma of being ejected and to figure out other ways to live ... I won't trivialize the difficulties involved, but now the only thing I miss from my salaryman days is the income

i need the med coverage

As mentioned on the other thread, in January I was made redundant 7 days before I hit 50.
my skills are probably no longer in demand (manual software tester) due to an increased focus on automated testing, and to be honest, I think I have had enough of software/corporate culture.
The last few months I have been a stay at home dad, and will probably remain so while mk2 goes through his teenage trials and tribulations (3 more years).
The very idea of being the Office New Boy at the age of 50 fills me with dread, and I know it would bring on a lot of stress and anxiety.
I am in a 'fortunate' position in that due to life insurance, I have no mortgage and get a small occupational pension from BH so will not be made homeless or starve, but coming to terms with a very different financial outlook is still the big stumbling block.
That and daytime TV.
Thank goodness for 'Walter Presents .. '.

In other news : re lower back pain.
Having sat on my arse in an office for 30 years the last 2 years were very problematic re my back.
My solution : swimming.
I have started swimming 4 times a week (roughly 1km each time), and the change has been very noticeable.

Slightly overlapping with what I said on the Forties thread, but I was made redundant at 51, also due to having skills which are no longer in demand. My partner has always earned a lot more than me, so we were OK - but then he was made redundant last year, at 58. Thankfully his skills are still in demand, but he refuses to re-dose himself with the poison of corporate culture - so it's taking a while to sort things out, and we are having to be careful with money, for the first time since our twenties.

I cover my monthly outgoings with DJ-ing (a weekly gig and a monthly gig) and Discogs selling (I inherited a rare and valuable collection, and am being ruthless with my own). We also have a lodger, for the first time in nearly thirty years - a good friend, also in his fifties, going through a divorce and coming to terms with being on the gay side of bi. He hates his job and wants to change back to his old career, but it would involve a precarious salary drop, at least to begin with, which isn't great timing when you're getting divorced.

Despite this difficulties, my net life satisfaction level is still hugely in credit. I feel busy, fulfilled, and grateful for all I've got. But I can't deny the presence of a persistent low-level background hum, which says "You are uniquely unemployable. Everyone else can get jobs, but you haven't got what it takes." It's bullshit, but it's there.

Fuck those cry baby under 50s in that other thread. Here's to getting Saga Holiday ads and people ringing me to ask if I want to cash in my pension and/or release some equity from my home and to being told I can't increase my life insurance because YOU R 2 OLD.

Also I just put up a desk, not too shabby eh? I'll be paying for it tomorrow mind.

it doesn't start getting real until you can't remember your 40s

xp Incidentally my pension is not worth the paper it's printed on so who's laughing now Mr Random Cold Caller?

it gets really real when your pathetic gig income and Obamacare fast-track you to bankruptcy

what a feelin'

― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Monday, July 2, 2018 8:55 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Right in my knees.

oh hi, I'm 54 now
peeing takes a long time

― WilliamC, Thursday, January 4, 2018 12:24 PM

Seven weeks shy of 56, but I found the secret: constant impotent rage keeps me young.

momus is almost 50

He’ll be 60 in February.

Fuck those cry baby under 50s in that other thread.

They're just coming to grips with their ultimate mortality, poor dears. Be kind to them.

I’m 55 and having a pretty good time.

I seem to have rediscovered my mojo this year: got serious about my job, holidayed in Japan, rekindled my interests in art and photography, good clothes (lost 40lb weight which helped), and the joy of short breaks by Eurostar.

Music is the thing that truly can connect people with dementia with their earlier life. I've seen it a few times now, how everything can seem foggy and then those barriers all fade away with a song. My dad started singing a song once, when we were going through various singalong songs, and I googled the lyrics and the only match online was with a 1940s Minneapolis Boy Scouts songbook. Apparently it was an old Scottish folk song where someone had swapped in the names of Minnesota lakes.

yeah, that was a thing I heard about Glen Campbell's last days... he couldn't remember who his wife was, but put a guitar in his hands and he remembered everything, all the chords and lyrics

Same with how Tony Bennett spent his last years essentially rehearsing daily at home with a pianist. There are much worse fates.

Put me in a room with a bunch of records/cds/books and let me fuss with them and reorganize them for the rest of my time. Give me the same box of used records to dig through every day. “Ha ha! Al Hirt! Remember him?”

The Oliver Sachs book Musicology has a lot of cases where people with diminished facilities completely bypass them with music. Heartening in many ways

Oh yeah! The one guy, I think he had experience as a choir director but due to brain herpes he couldn’t remember more than a few minutes. This poor guy was helpless but put him in front of some music and he was back to normal for as long as the song lasted.

Aaaaa why do the best conversations always happen when I am asleep, stupid australia.

Keeping things is (probably sadly) my jam. I still have most of the letters I wrote to various people over the years (including a few to the singer of the Mavis's who I was briefly penpals with in the mid 80s well before she was in a band). I wish I still had all my email but prior to gmail, it was scattered amongst ISP-based services that are long gone, and/or lost to old discarded hard drives I didnt back up.

But I still have all my Livejournal (kept since 2000) and all my gmail since 2004 (wow I had to look that up), save a batch I intentionally deleted a few years ago for reasons.

I still have the teddybear I was gifted before I was even born. And a bunch of old drawings/writings from teenage years, and loads of journals too.

One sad loss is all of the work I did while studying writing in the 90s at college. It was the zipdisk era, and as a result all the saved work has gone pouf.

When I say "letters I wrote" obv I mean letters written to me, I dont keep my own letters lol.

Mum recently gave me a pile of stuff including old school reports, drawings and CARDS THAT I MADE FOR HER

I’m like, “ma’am, these are yours for eternity I made them FOR YOU don’t act like you can give them back. “

LOL nice. Yeah for years my mum always gets at me "oh there's so much of your crap down in the garage please come and take it or let me throw it away". I never usually have the luggage space to take anything back, but I really should do it properly now - Dad's now died and Mum prob only has another 15 years. Sigh.

I'm entering the 'Swedish death cleaning' phase of life and getting really unsentimental about old shit... sometimes I wish I just had a blanket, cot and a lamp, maybe a toothbrush

Mum recently gave me a pile of stuff including old school reports, drawings and CARDS THAT I MADE FOR HER

I’m like, “ma’am, these are yours for eternity I made them FOR YOU don’t act like you can give them back. “

My parents have been doing this for years, and it always bugs me. They sent me all the pictures they had of me. Then they sent me all the pictures they had of my son, including several cute albums from when he was little that we put together as nice gifts for them. I know they have their reasons, but it just feels like they don't want to see us.

When my mom was dying she went through all the stuff she had saved of mine. School report cards, drawings I'd made, etc. Over a series of visits we went through it all. We ended up tossing pretty much everything. It was kind of sad, but at the same time I remember thinking, this is what you saved it for. So we could do this. So we could have this moment together and remember things.

Anyway Moodles I guess I'm saying maybe there's something similar operating with them - like, we had it, now we're coming to the end of our road, and it's for you now, if you want it.

When my mom was dying she went through all the stuff she had saved of mine. School report cards, drawings I'd made, etc. Over a series of visits we went through it all. We ended up tossing pretty much everything. It was kind of sad, but at the same time I remember thinking, this is what you saved it for. So we could do this. So we could have this moment together and remember things.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, May 28, 2026 11:05 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Damn, this post hits hard. I think our moms were sick at the same time from what I recall. My mom saved a file for me but we never got to do this before she died. I'm not sure my Dad knows where it is and I would at least like the chance to look through it before he just chucks it out.

One thing I did for my mom before she died was sort through 1500 photographs that she had been trying to organize and scan before her brain cancer progressed but she had gotten confused or it was just too much for her and they were mostly unsorted in ziploc bags in a big cardboard box. So I spent like 6 hours one day sorting through them with her. It was great. She was always the family repository of distant cousins, great uncles, etc., even for my dad's family. It was a little sad because she couldn't remember people in the photos as well as she used to, but who cares. Once we got them sorted, I sent them off to be scanned and I think it was a tremendous load off her mind to have gotten this done before she passed.

Tracer that's beautiful. Thank you. That's what it was always for.

I was walking though my oakland neighborhood a couple years back and saw where they must have cleaned out a storage unit in an apartment building, leaving boxes of old stuff on the sidewalk. One box was full of photo albums: mostly black folks in the 70's/80s, family photos, people partying in bars, having holiday dinners, rolling skating, etc. It was sad to see them left as trash on a sidewalk... I pondered bringing them home and trying to find out who they might be, but I was going somewhere and it looked a little overwhelming tbh. I hope they somehow avoided being hauled to the dump

Lovely, Tracer. I'm having sort of a prolonged version of this with my Mom, who ever since they moved down here two years ago has been slowly unpacking and sorting through boxes of her old files, which includes stuff about me and my siblings' childhoods. Every week or two she asks me if I want something before she throws it away. Most of them I don't, but some of them I do really enjoy reading or looking at. They're also good reminders to me that I was a child with her and my dad, and they were good parents or as good as they knew how. (True of most of us.) Which helps me appreciate them as we're all now in a different and sometimes stressful phase.