I noticed on telly last week that someone has managed to flog an Age Simulator Suit to a London university, so that "even … younger people", such as their healthcare students, can be given "new insight" into what elderly people feel like. You know – half blind, deaf, tottering, aching all over, permanently knackered, with the shakes and too weedy to open the marmalade pot. Then the students will understand that if your hand wobbles, it's difficult to hold a cup of tea and such like.
What a worry. Are the students late developers? Aren't they meant to have got the hang of cognitive empathy by age four or five? Without a simulator suit? And these suits are not cheap: £1,070, basic model, without accessories, such as the "unilateral paralysis" or "tremor simulator".
A cheaper, but old-fashioned method, might be to chat to older people, and ask us how we feel, then we'll describe it and the young can try and imagine it. We're quite good at expressing ourselves verbally. This method might be even more effective than the suit, and could deal with ailments that are so far unsimulateable, including piles or trapped wind – both excruciatingly painful, and suffered by both young and old, so it shouldn't be too difficult to dredge up a bit of empathy.
Actually, we and the young have lots of ailments in common. Through talking, an instant form of communication, they would discover that we also break limbs, tear ligaments, have kidney stones, and slice our fingers accidentally while chopping vegetables. But they could probably guess what those feel like, without even a chat, because of the blood and screaming. And you never know, they may find an old person without any problems at all, because not all the over-65s are crawling around like half-dead beetles.
Even the Committee on the Voluntary Section and Ageing report is expected to admit that some of us are not a problem and are "actively contributing to society". Oh, thank you very much, committee, for pointing that out. I don't want to sound bitter and sarky, of course, but I am utterly browned off that you still need to do so.
