"Creeping closer to 50" means you're still here with us. I turn 70 this year and I'm throwing myself a huge, decadent party. Physically I can't do the things I used to -- or even the things i want to, but severe arthritis runs in the family. I had one knee replaced and they've had to go back in three times. No more. I always hated exercise anyway. But I can still dance and can continue going on reinventing myself. This week it's a blue streak in my hair and lots of eye makeup. For a while it was tattoos. Who knows how much trouble I'll be able to get into as time goes by? If you're aging it means you're still on the carousel for another ride.

It's just a number. Take care of yourself, make time for you.

50!!! you bees old.

54, I can see the road downhill from here....

It varied for me. I dreaded 30, but I got over it as soon as it happened. 40 was a breeze. 50 was a nightmare, but it came and went, and now it means nothing to me. This is currently the best version of me that there has ever been, and I accept that it took a lot of years to get here.

You are still a kid! LOL. I dreaded 40 but that passed and I knew how cool I was. I think a lot has to do with where you are with your life. If you are happy and content your age won't matter.

I'll be 49 in a month, I still don't feel old! I guess I am in denial! Lol

It comes on slowly... wiry eyebrows, growing wrinkles, the perceptible sag of jowls, then hairy ears (intimations of mortality - collect the set!). Suddenly all of the rock icons and movie stars of your youth have become old people You look in the mirror and instead of you standing there, it's some aged dude and it begins to dawn that you're growing irreversibly o-l-d and, what's worse, that's how others now see you, even if inside you still feel nearer 32 than 64. Can't wait for my eighties.

But then...

Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death

Roger McGough

in body, or mind?

I have some health issues, and although I joke about being 'old', I know that 45 is not old. Of course, I could easily slide into a Monty-Python based diatribe at this point - but that actually proves my other point.

Still sharp in the mind; even moreso with age than when I was 'young'.

It's not about being old, young, etc... It's about living the best life you can, day to day.

In the end, it's all you really have, isn't it?

Fell old not yet ?

I'm a week or so away from 53, and I don't feel old. It's just a number. What's more important is how you live your life, and your attitude. I know some people far younger than me who seem really old, and some quite a bit older who are very young.

I was always an "old" young person and now I am a "young" old person.