As Evelyn Couch said to Ninny Threadgoode in Fannie Flagg’s “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe”: “I’m too young to be old and too old to be young. I just don’t fit anywhere.”I think about this line often, this feeling of being out of place, particularly in a culture that obsessively glorifies youth and teaches us to view aging as an enemy. No one really tells us how we’re supposed to age, how much fighting against it and how much acceptance of it is the right balance. No one tells us how we’re supposed to feel when the body grows softer and the hair grayer, how we’re supposed to consider the craping of the skin or the wrinkles on the face that make our smiles feel unfortunate. The poet Dylan Thomas told us we should “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” that “old age should burn and rave at close of day.” He died, sadly, before turning 40.

---

Persons: Evelyn Couch, Ninny, Fannie Flagg’s, “, Dylan Thomas, ” Locations: Fannie