Old? Nope, we're classics
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton W. Cole
My buddy Tom just finished reading a classic novel, one that was written in 1818.
It was one of those thick, ponderous volumes, the kind of deadly instruments that literature teachers inflicted on us students because the Board of Education frowned on excessive use of torture racks and thumbscrews.
Tom finished the dusty old book in a couple of days. He’s starting on another volume of classic literature, this one a bit newer. It was written in 1897. He has two more novels from the 1800s lined up.
“It’s weird,” Tom said. “I didn’t really want to read the classics in school and now that I’ve ‘matured,’ I’m interested in them.”
This is one of the curiosities we have discovered about aging.
Tom and I have been best friends since junior high school back in the ’70s — the 1970s, that is, not the 1870s. Contrary to rumor, we are merely old, not classics. But classic is what we hope to achieve.
By definition, “old” refers to the age. “‘Classic’ implies that it's not just old, but also of enduring value and still relevant today,” according to what that new-fangled AI stuff told me.
Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to reading classic literature. In our youth, we dismissed it. Now that we’ve wised up a few years, we see that there may have been something there all along.
Even more astounding is that our literature teachers may actually have been dealing us a kindness, introducing us to classics.
We know we’re getting old. Our Medicare cards, thickening list of prescriptions and the crackling noises our bodies make when we move proves that. And the black socks we wear with sandals (are they called sandals anymore?).
But we want to be classic — valuable and relevant. In other words, cool.
You want proof? Young people today wear fashions from your youth and call it a classic retro look.
Flip through your TV offerings and you’ll find bunches of channels dedicated entirely to the good old days — TV Land, Boomerang, TCM, Nick at Nite and MeTV (“The Definitive Destination for Classic TV”)
I know nothing about Top 40 music. I don’t know if there still is such a thing as Top 40 these days. I tune into classic rock stations. It’s the music that now plays in elevators. But at one time, ah, at one time…
My late wife and I happily attended a Doobie Brothers 50th anniversary concert a few years back. It wasn’t just a wrinklies convention. We saw a lot of young punk kids in the crowd grooving to the songs we loved decades earlier.
These are the kids that have an appreciation for classics (although “Black Water” and “Long Train Runnin’” still sound pretty current to me).
One of my favorite groups from my youth is the Classics IV. Through Stormy or Sunny weather, I sang along with Traces of their Spooky little songs long before the four (and sometimes six) became classics.
(If you caught all those song titles in the last sentence, and hummed along, you’re probably a classic, too.)
With age comes wisdom. And senior discounts. And an appreciation for how cool the classics really are.
According to the experts, we wizened ones are drawn to classics like old moths to kerosene lanterns because “as we gain life experience, we are better equipped to grasp the universal themes of love, loss, betrayal and redemption explored in classics, understanding their nuances and complexities.”
Also, our music was just plain better.
So for all the other kids my age and Tom’s age, don’t worry about hiding your classic novels behind a copy of Modern Romance or Current Affairs magazines. Be proud. We’re not old.
We’re classics.
Get out the feathered quill and write Classic Cole at news@falmouthoutlook.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on that old classic, Facebook.