Why is everyone age-conscious?

Stepping out on my constitutional on a sunny Sunday evening I was taken aback all on a sudden when a stranger appearing to be in his mid-seventies asked me, "Are you above or below seventy, Sir?" I stopped and asked him in turn, "How old do you think I would be?" keeping my countenance, as I always abhor anyone enquiring my age or any other personal details. He quoted a figure that was somewhat close to my age. I nodded my pate in the affirmative only to keep him from making further queries about my private affairs.

One day following my last lap round the vast quadrilateral, my usual venue of walk every evening I moved to a nearby bus stand on the main road and parked myself on one of the perforated steel benches chilling out with slow, deep breaths. A man with a pudding face and pitch-black complexion emerged before me from somewhere around like a bolt from the blue and asked me, "How old are you, Sir" — as if he were much concerned about my age and well-being-— and added, "I am sixty three" in a conceited manner.

By then a bus came to the stand screeching to a halt. Noticing it he scuttled towards it and boarded. Slapping my forehead with my palm I mused, "Oh, what a bizarre sort of blokes I have to run into even while unwinding in a brief break during my walk for health. On completion of my second lap around the sprawling football ground, also a part of where I daily walk on another day I noticed the ball that came bouncing before me out of the ground. In a snap I hopped a step forward and punted the ball back into the ground reliving my schooldays for a moment when I was an ardent football player. "Thank you uncle" chorused a few of the players as I obviated their need to come out of the field to pick the ball. Waving back to them in a reciprocal gesture I went my way.

A couple of gaffers perched on one of the cement benches on the pavement asked me, "Hi, you young man, How old are you?" as I was walking past them on my return to home. Their unexpected query sounded a tad sarcastic. Raising the right hand well above my bonce with all the digital extremities fanning out, I turned it from side to side to mean that I was loath to reply them. While descending the stairs at the entrance of a private sector bank holding the metal railing with my right hand, a middle-aged man caught hold of my left in a gesture of help notwithstanding my refusal to accept his guidance and kept holding it till I reached the floor below. The shepherding he was offering me on his own was more of a discomfort to me than a sort of help. He was a job's comforter to me till I parted with him on the ground floor.