I created the Wikipedia article on “You Are Old, Father William”, about a decade ago. One of my strokes of good fortune is that I had read the original by South

I created the Wikipedia article on “You Are Old, Father William”, about a decade ago. One of my strokes of good fortune is that I had read the original by Southey before reading Lewis Carroll's parody in Alice, so I was able to appreciate it more and found it hilarious! Original: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Old_Man%27s_Comforts_and_How_He_Gained_Them https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Old_Man%27s_Comforts_and_... Parody: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William (current version of article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=You_Are_Old,_Father_William&oldid=888080936 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=You_Are_Old,_Fath...) A quote I scoured for the article then (the line about the “idiot questioner”) is also in this article. The author of this article may have come across this quote independently rather than via Wikipedia, but this sort of thing has happened often enough that I've come to realize writing for Wikipedia has surprisingly large impact. --- As an aside, the article is about changing perceptions of old age: from the “sententious piety about old age” current at the time of Southey/Carroll, to their “invisibility” today. (A general paucity of works featuring old people at their centre, with a few examples collected in this article: I'd add films too, like Pixar's Up, or these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_old_age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_old_age.) It ends with “I would like to see more of this salutary belligerence among my fellow oldsters.” In short, it's about old age in general, and today's “cult of youth”. But many comments here so far are about taxes, the economy, “Boomers”, social security,… none of which is touched on by the article at all, beyond the first clause of the first sentence. I wonder whether there may be a cultural component here; is it the case that people who don't grow up with experiences of highly valuable conversations with them in childhood and youth, are inclined to think of them primarily in economic terms? Or is it that any discussion of “old people” in general is impossible without reference to the entire generation of “old people” one happens to know? Anyway, here's another “old writer” the article didn't mention: a wonderful interview with P. G. Wodehouse at 91 (and a half): https://web.archive.org/web/20150814120619/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3773/the-art-of-fiction-no-60-p-g-wodehouse https://web.archive.org/web/20150814120619/http://www.thepar...