The first time I ever felt like I was getting older, was when some kid went whipping by me on roller skates and yelled, “Out of the way, old guy!”
I was indignant. I wasn’t old.
It crept up on me. Like that time I saw the picture of the back of some guy’s head and said to myself – who is that bald guy? It was me.
These moments are the “slap in the face” of getting older. But after you get over the shock, you go back to that place that Mark Twain described as “not a river in Egypt. Denial.
But at one point or another, you start to think that, yeah, I’m uh… becoming a — senior. It creeps up. When the guy in the pharmacy said, “I assume you’ll be coming back on Tuesday, to buy this so you can get a discount?” He meant the senior’s discount. “Oh, what the hell, I am buying a blood pressure monitor.” Might as well take the discount.
I saved fifteen bucks. This “old guy thing”might not be so bad after all.
Then we were in a hurry and I pulled into a parking space marked for seniors – 55 and over. My wife said, “hey you can’t park here.”
I smiled and said. “Yes I can – I’m a senior.”
She looked at me and frowned. “It’s for somebody with mobility issues. Park somewhere else.” Sometimes she takes all the fun out of things.
But she is right. I’m 67, in pretty good shape and I still play rock and roll in a band. I’m a YouTube fanatic. I keep up with the latest technology. I don’t feel old.
But then neither did my dad. He died at 84, still carrying wood into the house, still lighting up the room with his music, playing for hours into the night, sipping a glass of rye. He still turned me on to new music.
But one time, he confessed to me that he actually got scammed out of money by a phone fraud.
“I thought it was your brother. He said he was arrested. I had to send money.” He looked at me sheepishly. “I knew it didn’t feel right. But it was the middle of the night. It sounded like him. I couldn’t take the chance.”
And that’s the first time I really thought of him as older. But in reality, the signs had been there for years. My dad was really young and open-minded in a lot of ways, but his habits in terms of technology and security were, well, old-fashioned. He kept up with many things, but he plodded along with things like security. I looked at the password stuck to his computer on a yellow Post-it note. And I thought, well, he’s 84.
But then I started to notice my friends. Much younger. More sophisticated. Facebook accounts were hacked. It seems I get a notice every couple of days saying “Don’t take friend requests from me.” Beyond the fact that they sent this out to their friends, I had to ask “Don’t they have two-factor authentication turned on?” I did a post on it and sent it out to all my friends a year or so ago. Did nobody read it?”
And I started to think – do my friends and colleagues think differently about security?
I’m not perfect by any means. No one is. But maybe the reason I keep up at all is because I’m in the industry. But what are the real attitudes of post-55 adults? What does that mean in today’s world of cyber threats? It matters to those of us who are responsible for cybersecurity – and if I asked you who that is, it would be a trick question. We are ALL responsible for cybersecurity. So we all need to know this.
And if you want to find out, why not take the question to someone who would know?
My guest is Adam Evans, Senior Vice President & CISO at RBC. RBC just did a study on the attitudes of people over 55. We’re going to talk about that and a lot more. Hope you will join us.