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"Old Age" Topic Of Grade 13 Orator Mr. Chairman, Honourable Judges, Worthy Opponents, Ladies and Gentlemen What do we, as an average| group of people, have in com- mon' Several answers seem possible. Most.of you are members of the Lions' Club. Seme of ys speak English; some of us speak French. We all live im Canada. But an- other characteristic comes to mind: one which we share with every man, and every liv thing on earth We are aging and our ultim- ate goal is old age. It seems strange that we have so many useful and appropriate terms for our stages in life We have infancy, adolescence, pu- berty, maturity, and yet no one has coined an adequate word for our later years. Our! autumn years--bdeautiful but not very scientific -- while senescence is certainly scien- tifie but not very beautiful. Rh conjures up the wrinkled, | arthritic, aged grandmother, | dried as parchment and reek. ing of mothballs. It's not a} pleasing invitation to grow- ing old. The great emphasis today/ is on youth. To be young is to be alive, while to be old is| to be a shadow of death. We do not understand age; we are not prepared for it and so we fear it. We have many outdated stereotypes of om ; ' ility, and many inviting leg- ends of escape From the Neolythic tribes of Piseanthropus to Neander-| thal man come prodigious/ terms of survival of the strongest. The image arises of the feeble old man aban- doned and left adying to the sabertooth tiger. From the steaming cauldrons of medie- val witchcraft comes the ex otic recipe for eternal youth The ingredients are hard to come by, the taste is vile, and it seems most significant that the crone who invented it is/ no longer among us. From the seventeenth century age of romanticism come more attractive tales of men like Ponce de Leon. He spent years in the search of the llusive Crystal fountain of youth The odd fanatic is quick to inform us that simply because it was not found does not prove that it does not exist. Somewhere up ihe steaming Amazon; in darkest Africa; or in the Kimalayan paradise: some where, he insists, ten thow sand-yearold beauties still toast their youth But finally we are warned, and we already know the ill. fated story of the man who sold his soul to Satan to stay young. How foolish he was to forget to include his wife As she got older and crosser, our dubious hero was forced to leave her. But everyone he meets grows older and so he wanders alone and miser- able until finally he is hit by a passing car. In seconds he passes from youth, to ex- treme age, to ashes. It is a tragic story, and from it we learn that we belong to to- day and though our time is short, it is our time and we must live it fully. Besides this lesson, our scientists scream at us daily: "Stop your foolish dreaming; the last thing we need now is immortal man." And so centuries of hopeful dreams are shattered and we face the reality that with every breath we take we are getting older. There are many facts about age of which few peo- ple are aware. In 1900 the average life expectancy was only forty-five; while by 1960 it had risen to seventy-two. Only four per cent of all our senior citizens live in insti- tutions; the greater percent- age are independent and ac- tive. The oldest man on proven record lived to be one hundred and thirteen The women's Liberation Movement finds plausible support in a general survey At birth there are approxim- ately one hundred and four cept it. The Greeks vener- ated age as the epitome of knowledge and experience. ht is after all the culmination of a lifetime of learning Physical age need not frigh- ten us. It is inevitable. The thoughts are independent of the body and the mind does not have to grow old. James Garfield put it well: "If wrinkles must be written upon the brow, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old." Growing old is the most delicate test of our fa- culties and our strength. As Emile said, "To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom". But wisdom, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is not formal education; it is not a formula we can memorize; it is a ma- turity that must develop in- side us. If we have this feel- ing already we are fortunate. if not, we must begin to de-| velop it now. Then someday we can enjoy our old age as much as we enjoy the pre- sent. REMEMBER The new "deadlines" Display advertising of lar- ger size, articles, reports from meetings, etc. 5 p.m. Monday. Classified and smailer dis- play ads not later than 12 noon, Tuesday. males to every one hundred But by 1960, at ages sixty-five and over, there were only eight hundred and Sixteen men to every one females. | thousand women | So we see that modern wo-} man is only being generous | and thoughtful when she ia- sists on sharing the work- load ,and far from discour- aging her, man should en- courage her. He might pos-/ sibly live longer for it : But age is more than sta-| tistics and biology. It is far| more vitally a state of mind, and all the superstition and fallacies surrounding it can be dispelled if we simply ac-| LADY MOTORISTS! AND MEN MOTORISTS Why Pay More? SAVE ON PREMIUM QUALITY GAS A new DX Station TO SERVE YOU AT YODOCYy All this time w refining our vements Nobody builds o Nobody builds in w e ve been refining it refinements and r kind of paint has what Volkswagen hos mproving it mor oving ody has the horde of inspectors. The 16,000 nspections. 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