Is age a bane or a benefit?

  "Old age is no place for sissies," moaned actress Bette Davis. George Bernard Shaw agreed. "Youth is a wonderful thing," he said. "What a crime to waste it on children." But according to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, many studies have found that how we think about age determines how we feel. Thinking in terms of decline and disability impacts our health. We feel better if we see age in terms of opportunity and growth. According to Yale researcher Becca Levy, we have the ability to overcome and resist negative stereotypes and "compensate for the ill effects of automatic ageism." If you still think age is gloom and doom, meet 100-year-old Felimina Rotundo of Buffalo, NY.

                                                                                                                                           WGRZ.com
She's causing a problem for her son Gary. "I'm 74," he says with a laugh, "and I can't retire 'cause she's still working! She's sharper than me, no question about it." Felimina isn't just working part-time either. She works six days a week, 11 hours a day, at the College Laundry Shoppe on Maine St. in Buffalo. She drives, and handles all the operations at the laundromat. She attributes her longevity to her hardworking nature, claiming it gives her "a reason to always wake up in the morning and a reason to always hustle." She feels 75 is a good age for most folks to retire, if they have health issues, but she hasn't considered it yet. Maybe baseball star Satchel Paige was right when he said age is a case of mind over matter. "If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."