I made my standard comment: "Sure, he looks young. He made a pact with the Devil a long time ago." Which is a reference to a famous old story in which a man sells his soul to the Devil in order to remain young-looking while his image in the mirror looks his real age.
Maybe Paul did: the gray in his hair is far less than the gray under my blonde hair dye, just enough to make him look distinguished rather than old. Did you ever notice that in our society men look distinguished as they age and women look old? That's why old men stay newscasters and middle-aged women newscasters get offered "retirement with honor."
If you're interested in why this happens, sexism is the oldest sin. It started in Genesis when the males being inspired by God to tell the story of creation, listened to their own prejudices instead of God at one point and insisted that women caused the Expulsion from the Garden by sinning first. I personally deal with this injustice by Blogging rather than Botoxing. It's healthier for both body and soul.
Other times, people look at both of us and say "You both look so good!"
Which means, I think, that they're amazed we're able to smile after all that we've been through by ages seventy-seven and seventy.
They forget that everyone who has run up our amount of mileage has a lot of wear on their tires, dents in their bumpers, and cracks in their windshields.
What Paul and I privately say to each other is "We wish at least God would remember how old we are and stop giving us more and more stuff to do."
But at least all the "stuff" we do keeps us from fixating on our arthritis, our Trigger Fingers (look it up), and how many times we get up during the night to use the bathroom.
My driving skills stay sharp driving my sixty-four year old sister Linda to different Doctors' appointments preparing for her full knee replacement surgery in October. Remembering how to feed infants comes back to me when I take my time feeding my ninety-nine year old Mom, who has dementia, when I visit her in the nursing home.
Mom keeps my sense of humor sharp too. A young male worker there, Gary, has been "promoted" from being her Principal at her school (she was a teacher so to her the nursing home is her "school") to being her boy friend. God love him, when she says this, he kisses her on the forehead and says "Hi, Sweetheart." When I told Linda, the Joker, about Gary's "promotion," the next time she saw him she said "Welcome to the family, Dad!"
That's the trick to staying young, you know: get involved in all your family catastrophes and keep doing stuff. And don't ever think that any stuff is age-related.
I use "OMG" on Facebook and have fun counting the "hits" on my posts. I told my grand-daughter this and she giggled and said I sounded like a teenager. More Senior Power to me. I enjoy using Facebook to connect with people of all ages, to share posts that make people laugh, to write posts that comfort and challenge others. I'm living life, not caring that a lot of seniors don't touch a computer, and wouldn't know what a Blog is. At seventy I no longer worry about peer pressure or what anybody thinks. Heck, there are fewer and fewer people in my age group to even care what I'm doing. That's real freedom!
Paul, at seventy-seven, still gets asked by other Deacons or men in Formation to be their spiritual director. He always says yes, considering it an honor. The word "retirement" never crosses his mind. As even older folks would say, he still has "too many fish to fry." When I see him quietly, faithfully praying the Office (Psalms and other Scripture readings) every morning and evening, I think of Psalm 1, verse 3: "They are like a tree planted near streams of water, that yields its fruit in season; Its leaves never wither; what ever they do prospers."
So, to quote Spock from Star Trek, and those hilarious geeks on "Big Bang Theory," I pray that you all "Live long and Prosper!"