I have a simple objective: to grow old gracefully,
surreptitiously and, most important, very slowly. And I might achieve it if I
did not have to fill out application forms or talk to people.
Unfortunately I have to do both, regularly. I fill an
application form of some form every week. It’s needed for everything nowadays:
to buy air tickets; to open bank accounts; to close bank accounts; to purchase insurance;
to rent cars; to join loyalty programs and even to ask questions on some snooty
websites. The forms may differ in size, colour and font size, but they are
identical in one respect: they want to know my age.
Before the internet era, revealing one’s age on a form
was less demeaning. Printed forms had age brackets so one could hide within a
comfortable range like “35-49 years” without getting into intimate details. But
today’s electronic forms want you to select your exact year of birth from a
drop-down menu that starts with the current year (to ensure infants can enrol)
and goes down one painful year at a time. I find I have to scroll down several
pages before finding my birth-year and often there isn’t much room to scroll
downwards after that. Such drop-down menus are patently biased towards youth. A
friend of mine suggests that they should reverse the list by starting with 1880
and going downwards till the current year so that maturity is respected, while
youth does the scrolling. However, while this will mean we scroll down less, it
will make us stand out because we have to scroll down less. Like transferring a
heavy burden from your left hand to your right, it will merely reposition the
problem without solving it.
