[Oyk]

The term "spring chicken" has a metaphorical as well as a literal meaning. "No spring chicken" - a phrase in popular usage - is used humorously to draw a laugh, and is laughingly referred to someone who is no longer young.

Your metaphorical description of giggly schoolgals as spring chickens amused me. Honestly, I like your witty quips and sometime gentle humour of your posts.

My wife's Christian name is Ann, no relation to the evergreen Ann Kok from Mediacorp. I told her the other day she's no spring chicken, like her famous namesake from Mediacorp. She quipped that though she's only slightly younger than the gorgeous mediacorp artist, she is still a spring chicken as she's happily married and is still turning heads on the streets. She added that she's so unlike Ann Kok who's still single, still without a marriage proposal, and is well and truly a "no spring chicken."

Well, this chicken thingy isn't an easily definable term. Like you said, pretty much is left up to your own interpretation. That can be maddeningly subjective.

Who was that troll who called you "Lady"?  He'd passed away?  I believe he's nowhere near 70.  Prolly in his 50s or early 60s, and transitioning to spring corpse status at that age is a pity for some, but good riddance for him.  

Old age is either looked forward to (though not for its health issues) or dreaded.  For many, the thought of retiring with a  nest of golden eggs, and the ability to travel around the world, and jiak ah jiak ah, has been the subject of long-running threads in other forums.  They call it FIRE if they can even start on that journey before old age sets in.  For the men, the thoughts included piak ah piak ah.

Unrealistic as it is, the thoughts did not include long waits at polyclinics for their monthly or quarterly blood tests and doctor consultations, and big bags of medicine for diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, the usual.   Not a few also had some tubes of methyl salicylate for their arthritis.

For the women, the thoughts would not include being piak ah, being piak ah! although jiak ah jiak ah is not far from their mind. It's in their mind, in fact....

These are the thoughts of young people who think they can do in old age what they can now.  They don't look at their parents' bodies, and ask, will I become like that?

I digressed.

The thought of being old is dreaded by women, and they are the reason for the existence  - and profitability - of multi-billion dollar businesses that sell anything from facial lotions and creams of every variety to plastic surgery of every description.

Old age has been arbitrarily marked out at the age of 60.  The consolation is to say, it's still spring. At 80, it should be deep winter ba. PAP said we should live to 80 or 84 on average, so 80 has to be about right.

But hang on.  Although the official age for "old age" is 60....you pay discounted prices for meals at many places, and discounted fares for travel on buses/mrt from that age onwards, many women have their own cut-off for old age.  At 35, they'd say they are old if single.  If they have a kid attending primary one, that's a young mother.  At 50, when the kid is 23 and in his final year in medical school, she would be the envy of Ann Kok, who shant say she's a spring chicken.