From Chapter One BREAKING DOWN THE MYTHS OF AGING The topic of aging is durably encapsulated in a layer of myths in our society. And, like most myths, the ones about aging include a confusing blend of truth and fancy. We have compressed six of the most familiar of the aging myths into single-sentence assertions--frequently heard, usually with some link to reality, but always (thankfully) in significant conflict with recent scientific data. myth #1: To be old is to be sick. myth #2: You can't teach an old dog new tricks. myth #3: The horse is out of the barn. myth #4: The secret to successful aging is to choose your parents wisely. myth #5: The lights may be on, but the voltage is low. myth #6: The elderly don't pull their own weight. Contrasting these myths with scientific fact leads to the conclusion that our society is in persistent denial of some important truths about aging. Our perceptions about the elderly fail to keep pace with the dramatic changes in their actual status. We view the aged as sick, demented, frail, weak, disabled, powerless, sexless, passive, alone, unhappy, and unable to learn--in short, a rapidly growing mass of irreversibly ill, irretrievable older Americans. To sum up, the elderly are depicted as a figurative ball and chain holding back an otherwise spry collective society. While this image is far from true, evidence that the bias persists is everywhere around us. Media attention to the elderly continues to be focused on their frailty, occasionally interspersed, in recent years, by equally unrealistic presentations of improbably youthful elders. Gerontologists, an important group of scholars which has become prominent during the last few decades, have been as much a part of the problem as the solution. Their literature has been preoccupied with concerns about frailty, nursing home admissions, and the social and health care needs of multiply impaired elders. That we as a society are obsessed with the negative rather than the positiv