I understand that you lose the register of hearing that enables you to hear crickets, and when I can’t hear crickets in the summer I’ll be really sad.
What scares you about getting older?
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What would you like to leave your children?
Death & what remains
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A newer fixed question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Every time I play tennis I come back with a fresh injury.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
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Henry Marsh
Neurosurgeon and writer
I was looking at ageing in action, in black-and-white MRI pixels, death and dissolution foretold, and already partly achieved. My 70-year-old brain was shrunken and withered, a worn and sad version of what it once must have been. There were also ominous white spots in the white matter, signs of ischaemic damage, small-vessel disease, known in the trade as white matter hyperintensities – there are various names for them. They looked like some evil pox. Not to put too fine a point on it, my brain is starting to rot. I am starting to rot. It is the writing on the wall, a deadline.
Not to be able to do the things that you take for granted, like running up the tube steps or going somewhere under your own steam.
That I didn’t appreciate the smaller joys in life.
More from Jon Sopel
View profile →Impatience and vanity.
Professional footballer for Tottenham, or train driver.
Failure, being caught out, making an idiot of myself.
Warm and embracing.
Children’s underwear department at Marks & Spencer, Oxford Circus. I was 16 years old, earning money in my summer holidays.
Spirit of adventure and kindness.
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