I used to fear old age.

The way I saw it, all it entailed was pinching cheeks, dispensing money, going to book clubs and knitting. Lots and lots of knitting.

Men would wear shin-length plaid pants and a polka dot shirt and one of those little caps like cabbies wore, only made out of straw. Their eyebrows would grow together, sort of like Bert from "Sesame Street," only their eyebrow hair would be approximately as long as my bangs. They would keep spinning sunflower lawn ornaments in the front yard and talk all about their goiters. And I would be married to one of them.

And I would have a cat named Pook that had a ribbon tied around its neck and a collection of Maeve Binchy books and a Mah-Johngg board and a house that smells like old people. The kids next door would be afraid to play in my lawn.

I don’t know precisely where this fear originated. Most elderly people are very nice, and smell very little like moth balls and Wind Song perfume.

I think my dislike of the elderly stems from the fact that most of them think I am a man. No lie. You have no idea how many times I have had to smile at comments like "my, you’re becoming a strapping young man, aren’t you?" And these are people I’ve lived next door to for seven years.

And also, on TV most elderly people are evil. Didn’t you ever see "The Firm?" Wilford Brimley, man, like Santa on some sort of psychotic binge.

All I knew was, I didn’t want to become one of them. Then I would have to trade in my clothes at the Oldness Institute for flowered muumuus and floppy-brimmed straw hats. And I look very stupid in hats.

However, I have discovered something that makes me almost look forward to my twilight years:

Garage-saling.

Because if there’s one thing the elderly like to do, other than mock my gender and yell at the neighbor boy to get off the lawn, it’s going garage-saling. In fact, I’d wager that, of the approximately three hundred thousand people I saw at the AU garage sale last week, ten of them weren’t members of the Golden Buckeye club.

It’s something the two generations can bond over. Never have I felt so close to an older person as when we spent ten minutes looking through old Neil Diamond records (not that I like Neil Diamond. No, sir, not me! I’ve never even heard of Neil Diamond, and have never, ever sung "I am, I said" at the top of my lungs in my car.)

Granted, as soon as we had both found a record we liked we began fighting over it like overwrought professional wrestlers locked in a death match situation, and I had to give it up, because I’m sure somewhere in the Bible it says "Thou shalt not strike an elderly woman over Neil Diamond records." But the previous ten minutes were harmonious indeed.

Furthermore, I’ve discovered that the elderly are experts at arranging things in bags for maximum savings. For example: on Buck-a-Bag day, I was able to put two plants, a lamp, a sweater, some scarves, and a poster ("Karate Kid Part II"!!!!) into a Hawkins bag. Not bad.

But an elderly person, let’s say, would have been able to fit the plants, the sweater, the lamp, the scarves, the poster, three life-sized cardboard cut-outs of Richard Nixon, a Chevy Impala, Myers Hall, and the Love Boat.

Having seen this heretofore undiscovered special skill that apparently only comes with age, I now look forward to entering my twilight years. And I can rest easily knowing that if some whippersnapper tries to take something from me at a garage sale, I can hit her over the head with my beaded handbag and no one will be able to do a thing about it.