No, not a group. No, not flowers. No, not senior citizens.

*

“I don’t want to be a senior citizen,” said Warren Turner.

Me neither. That’s me in the plaid shirt & maroon hat next to my partner Rebecca.

I’m 72 and she is 71, which, by the way, is the average age of the folks in Mike’s photo.

Mike took this picture three days ago at Phelps Park in northeast, Iowa USA.

Rebecca and I live in two Iowa communities, Clarinda in the southwest and Decorah in the northeast.

We invited our southwest Iowa friends to join us for three days of kayaking, biking, and eating.

On Thursday, we kayaked down Minnesota’s Root River.

After Bill took this picture, he lost his phone in a shallow water bank.

Remembering the exact location, the next morning he retraced the three-hour route and recovered his waterproof phone.

In Bill’s photo, I’m in the orange kayak that I would overturn a few moments later.

Another Bill, with the white hat & blue life jacket, and Mike (not in the picture), would spend 30 minutes helping me retrieve & drain the submerged kayak.

On Friday, we biked Decorah’s Trout Run Trail; on Saturday, Minnesota’s Root River State Trail.

In this picture, that’s kayak-rescuer Bill in the colorful shirt, with Rebecca to his left.

Bill, Rebecca and two other perennials joined 15,000 bikers in late July to ride 420 miles across Iowa on RAGBRAI (The Des Moines Register’s Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa).

*

There are 54 million Americans over 65.

If you’ve got to lump us together and attach a label, why not perennials?

Thumbs-down on senior citizen. I wasn’t a junior citizen at 22.

Why call me a senior citizen at 72?

Millennial Sam Tetrault listed perennial as one of several better name-options.

I liked it, particularly when I read Dictionary.com’s definition of a perennial as

An older person whose mindset, interests, or lifestyles does not fit into any specific generational label.

None of us, whether old or young, likes to be seen through the lens of a label.

Categories, even my preferred-perennial, miss what is unique about each of us.

Regardless of age, we all want to be seen.

Not labeled.

Afterword

When our friends left Sunday morning, Rebecca and I took a three-hour nap.

And, later that evening, went to bed early.