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.

(these threads are hard to find what with not knowing whether it's 50s or 50's or fifties, the mass of threads about 50s music and the way ilx search treats apostrophes)

How did I get here?? (Thread for ILXors in their 60s and beyond)

Re invocating dearly departed, I often do this just to myself. My friend Cahl died some years back from cancer and I still think of him every time I pick up and use one of my good knives and remember him rousing on me and taking over my kitchen one birthday party of mine, saying I didn't look after my knives properly and "get out of the way let me do this". Whereupon he whipped up a japanese storm foodwise.
I think of everyone here as well, esp bimble.

Also my oldest kid is working on two different self-produced albums and this week successfully sold a beat to a rapper for $25.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Thursday, October 1, 2026 9:42 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

with these gas prices?! that's some shameful beat haggling.

My buddy refers to these conversations as an “organ recital.”

"One place where it is painful is with neighbors whose family or others close to them I didn't know. Walking by the former houses of people who I'd wave at every day...their spouse is also gone and I don't know anyone who they knew..."

Recently my dad switched mobile phones, which isn't earth-shattering news, but we suddenly realised that without the old phone he'd have no way to contact so many of his (and my) family, because we just have their numbers stored in the phone.

In particular he's gone for one of those old person big-number retro-style phones, so all of the contacts are stored on the SIM card rather than in The Cloud. The thought of losing contact with someone just because you didn't write their number down on a piece of paper feels like the setup to a romance novel from the 1930s, but it can actually happen in the actual real world today.

Luckily he had my uncle's address, so I wrote him a letter! Which means that I have now written letters to people in three different decades. Once in the 1990s, once in the 2000s... and once in the 2020s. I don't think I ever wrote a letter in the 2010s.

When I say "letter" I mean the physical kind, on paper. Obviously I didn't write it, I typed it. I deliberately didn't justify the text because that's not the kind of thing you do with a personal letter.

I got retinal laser surgery this year and now I know that if I see flashes and floaters I am going STRAIGHT TO AN ER.

When I actually went to the eye doctor I asked him a bit more about the best thing to do, because he admitted that unless the ER had an eye specialist there wasn't really much they could do there. He said now that I was registered as a patient with his practice if it happens again I should call them so they can see me immediately.

As for the rest, well... I made it to my 50s. My mother didn't. Like Christine, whatever may come I just want to see what happens in the world tomorrow.

This also belongs in "things I was shocking old before I learned", but yesterday I learned that Wilford Brimley was only fifty years old when he appeared in Cocoon. In fact he was only 49 when filming commenced.

So, I am officially the same age as Wilford Brimley, when he appeared in Cocoon, which is a sobering thought. And by extension this means that I'm actually older than Brimley was when he was in The Thing, two years earlier. I have less diabetes than Wilford Brimley.

This raises a horrible thought. When I make hilarious, flirtatious comments to the schoolgirls at the local bus stop, am I actually a fat pervert instead of a debonair man about town? Surely not.

To this day I haven't seen Cocoon: The Return. It's an oddity. It has the form of a direct-to-video film, but it has the entire original cast, including Oscar-winner Dom Ameche. The music was by James Horner and it was screened for Ronald Reagan, who presumably sat there thinking "fuck you, Don Ameche, fuck you". I haven't seen it.

Reagan looked great for man in the '80s in his seventiesw.

yeah that was a big revelation a couple years back: that Paul Rudd is currently quite a bit older than Wilford Brimley was in Cocoon

When I actually went to the eye doctor I asked him a bit more about the best thing to do, because he admitted that unless the ER had an eye specialist there wasn't really much they could do there. He said now that I was registered as a patient with his practice if it happens again I should call them so they can see me immediately.

Good to know and more reason for me to take the time to get admitted to an alternate practice. The place I got it done is a racket and I took all my records and got out of there but now I have to be a new patient somewhere else.

yesterday I learned that Wilford Brimley was only fifty years old when he appeared in Cocoon

the 'brimley-cocoon line' social media account just noted that all the spice girls are now older than he was in cocoon

I have realized I need an age appropriate mattress

I can recommend the Helix brand

Last time I was in NYC, I got to see a really special friend from high school. It was the first time I had seen him in person in years, even though we had kept in touch on Instagram. I was looking forward to visiting with him especially since I would now have someone to share some grief with.

Another special friend of mine died in 2017. And then another in 2021. There weren't any funerals, no big congregations of the old gang coming together to share some stories. Just these "Can't believe it" type text messages. Some real stunted expressions of grief.

I didn't exactly need a shoulder to cry on, but I did want to talk about some recurring dreams I had been having. The dreams were strange enough in the fact that I usually didn't have recurring dreams.

So we're walking up Ninth Street so he could pick up some cymbals (lol @ nyc), and I start talking about our mutual friend who went first. How I'll be at a party or a show, and I'll run into him. How he'll offer me a smoke, and when I tell him I don't smoke anymore, he'll say that It's ok. You can smoke here.

And when I wake up, I realize that "here" wasn't the party.

My still-alive friend walked beside me in silence before just going, Huuuhhh, yeah that's weird. "Wanna hear about my recurring dream? It's more of a recurring nightmare."

"Yeah," I say. "Of course. What happens in them?"

"Well, I'm usually running down the sidewalk, being chased by the members of Kiss from the Destroyer album cover. And right when I can feel Gene's hand on my shoulder is when I wake up."

Sometimes, you just gotta take the gut punch, I guess.

love it

what with all the talk of detached retinas, i went and got my floaters checked out and apparently it's nothing more serious.

(i found some specsavers spam on the floor, it had a link to booking site, local branch had empty slots that lunchtime, i went and had the usual tests and then told the optician the score and she had a better look. had the dilating drops that made everything fuzzy and all. was in there for over an hour and was charged £15 which i think must've been a mistake.)

((prescription has gotten better and worse in the last 3 years in that as you age, and the lenses flatten, your life-long shortsightedness improves for distance viewing and worsens for near vision))