They say youth is wasted on the young. After all, all they do is post on Facebook and talk about the latest Twilight film. This is doubly sad considering we will all be old and alone one day, probably sooner than we’d like. What if we knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what it was going to be like when we got there? Would it create empathy? Would it make us visit our grandparents more often? Well, hang on to your flat cap, because it’s now possible.
The Age Man Suit, developed by Rachel Eckardt at the Evangelical Geriatrics Center, aims to shine a light on what it’s truly like to be a seventy-five year old. It’s specifically designed to force a younger person to experience the physical limitations of the elderly. First of all, the suit weighs 22 pounds so sliding it on your young, agile frame isn’t exactly easy. That’s not all. The suit includes ear flaps to muffle hearing, a yellow visor to obscure sight, padded gloves to dull the sense of touch, and knee and elbow pads to restrict joint movement. Before you know it you’ll be a bona-fide member of the senior set, albeit without the ability to get into the movies at a reduced rate.
The whole point of this suit is to hopefully give physicians who practice on the elderly a bit more sympathy. Their bedside manner tends to, how can we put this, belong in the bedpan instead of the actual bed. This is particularly important given the average human lifespan keeps increasing, which means more time with doctors as we get older. Check below for more images and, come on, call your grandmother already. She misses you.
