Seldom Too Old

I'm far from Wonder Woman, but the more I hear people complain that they're too old to learn something new, the more I wonder if I have a super power.

I accept the fact that some physical activities are more difficult to start at a later date and some others should probably even have an expiration date. I understand complaining if you're trying to ski for the first time at age sixty. We're more apt to break a bone now than we were when skiers wore sheep's fleece instead of technical fleece.  

But my friend's comment that her six-inch swatch was full of mistakes because it was really hard to learn to knit at age fifty-two left me in stitches. I'm sure not all of today's knitting grandmas learned before they were fifty-two; the apparently magic age of impossibility. I like to think they were so busy bowling and doing Jane Fonda videos that they never considered sitting down to knit potholders and mittens. And if those grannies could learn to knit and purl when their hair was pearly white, my brown-haired friend with YouTube, TikTok, knitting classes at the local craft store and a mom and friend who knit shouldn't blame her difficulty on age.

I was lucky enough to have learned when I was six. I often brag that's the age I made my first sweater. (The truth is I made the pieces of a sweater and my mom knit them together.) She probably also cast on the one hundered and fifty-eight stitches necessary to make that zippered, hooded cardigan with variegated yarn. But once the needles were loaded I just had to remember the mantra; stick it in, wrap it around, pull it through, take it off. It was that easy. And after you did the exact same thing what seemed like a trillion times to a six-year-old, you had a big enough piece for the back of a sweater.

I find it unthinkable to think something can be learned more easily at six than fifty-two. If you can memorize the necessary steps to transfer a photo from your cell phone to attach to an email that you send from your computer (something I find difficult) you can memorize the mantra.

And for those of you who think you're too old to learn a new language, I learned Italian at forty-six and could probably learn French if I did more than just carry the books around. You just have to study. Too old to get a driver's license? I got my second when I was fifty-five. Some say they're too old to learn to travel without having a tour guide and hotel booked in advance. That's not age, it's spirit of adventure. 

Learning to ice skate at six instead of sixty is definitely easier, but I don't think it's true for knitting a scarf and all the other things you're not doing because they're too hard to learn at an older age. 

I don't have the strength of Wonder Woman, but I can activate Mind Over Matter when it matters. If you hear me say that a six-year-old can learn something more easily than I can, it means I've lost my super power. Please transfer me to a rocking chair and bring me lots of yarn; fortunately I can already knit.