What is it like to be old? To find out firsthand, Pat Moore, 26, used makeup and wigs to disguise herself as an 85-year-old woman. She blurred her vision with baby-oil drops, dulled her hearing with ear plugs and stiffened her joints wih splints and heavy bandages. The result of her three-year study is recorded in ”Disguised” (Word Books).
Q–What made you do it?
A–While working as an industrial designer in New York City, I was constantly frustrated when I tried to make my colleagues aware that we were designing dials that someone with arthritis couldn`t turn and printing words that someone with weakening eyes couldn`t read. Everyone said, ”Pat, don`t worry about those people.” I was raised with those people, my grandparents. To me they were important people with real needs. So I decided to try to know more about what aging really means in America.
Q–How did young and middle-aged people treat you as an elderly person?
A–To some people I was invisible. They`d bump into me and keep going like I was part of the furniture. They`d cut in front of me at lines in the grocery store or a bank. After a while, I just allowed it to happen. I stopped fighting back. And then I`d meet little children who were either afraid of me or cruel to me.
Q–How did the elderly treat you?
A–Very well. We`d strike up friendships while sitting in the park or standing in line at the grocery store. The elderly are so lonely they`re willing to take a chance. The isolation they face is a terrible problem.
Q–What was the worst thing that happened to you?
A–I was walking in Harlem in New York, one of the country`s graying ghettos, and I heard sneakered feet running behind me. Then I felt someone grab me around the neck and then pull back on my spine, which I had had cinched to imitate someone with curvature of the spine. I thought my back was broken. I`ve never known such pain. And then these 12- and 13-year-old boys, about six or eight of them, began pummeling me. I could offer no resistance, so they just beat me up for sport. I still have the nightmares about it. And the same thing happens in Lincoln, Neb., Clearwater, Fla., Boise, Idaho, Sun City, Ariz.
Q–What is your main conclusion about being old in America?
A–If things remain the same, we all have nothing to look forward to.
