Thus The Wall Street Journal today. “Researchers are finding that, as people get older, friendships, creativity, and satisfaction with life all can flourish,” elaborates the newspaper. The bulk of the article deals with six prevalent “myths” about aging: depression is more prevalent in old age, cognitive decline is inevitable, older workers are less productive, loneliness is more likely, creativity declines with age, and more exercise is better. But research tells a different story: emotional wellbeing improves until the seventies and levels off afterwards, older adults who are not demented perform better in real life than on cognitive tests, there is no relationship between age and job performance, friendships improve with age, artists and scholars are most productive at midlife, and there is a point of diminishing returns with exercise. Encouraging, this. But one research reported in the article grabs most of my attention. Some three-thousand people were asked at what age a person becomes old. There were different answers for different age groups: it is sixty for those between eighteen and twenty-nine, sixty-nine for those between thirty and forty-nine, seventy-two for those between fifty and sixty-four, and seventy-four for those above sixty-five. If I were asked the same question, though, I would say that a person becomes old at eighty-five. I beat my age group in the research project by no less than nine years. Truly encouraging, this.