Warning:Older People at Large!

About ten years ago I was stuck in traffic with my mum. We crawled passed one of those triangular road signs, bordered in warning red, which has an elderly couple in black profile. Both figures are hunched over and the poor bloke has a stick with the woman clearly holding on for dear life. It's often got 'elderly people' written underneath. It's a warning sign that old folks are lurking and presumably may crawl out in front of your car.

My mum was technically old at the time in her seventies and neither did she have curvature of the spine nor walk with a stick. Nor did she have a bald head but that's probably taking the sign too literally. She objected to the depiction of older people as decrepit and slow, both in physical movement and perhaps by association even in brain function. She was an active walker, gardener, interested grandparent and generally alive and intelligent person. Why should older people be singled out?

She's now 88 and can hardly walk and in fact has a zimmer frame but I bet if I asked her she'd still object to older people being depicted as hunch-backed slowcoaches. She may take a while to get from A to B but she still sits upright in her wheelchair, alert and interested in the world and oh yes has wonderful thick white silky hair.