FOR SENIOR CITIZENS, it’s not the leap that’s dangerous, it’s the landing (Shutterstock).

Now that Old Joe Biden is getting ready to soon step into the history books as ex-president and almost-as-old Donald Trump is still being … Trump-ish, the question of age is in the public discourse.

Stripped of its technicalities, the issue is this: how old is too old to do … you know … stuff?

Belonging, as I do, to the Baby Boomer generation (born 1946 to 1964) I grew up with a bunch of folks who were lionized for our youth. We sculpted the culture with our enthusiasm for certain kinds of music, clothing and attitudes about relationships, spirituality and politics.

Unlike our parents’ [Greatest G]eneration, we expected a kind of eternal youth. Now in our 60s and 70s, we have followed our folk’ path with careers, children and a certain amount of carousing (they hid it, I suppose, while we flaunted it).

But I think we expected to reach a kind of stasis and never actually grow “actually old” and be smoothly vigorous until … well ….

Hasn’t quite turned out that way. When I was a kid, I fell off my bike a hundred times. When I fell off a few months ago, I was limping and grousing for all those months.

Playing basketball in the driveway with son Michael and the grand-persons, I was wide open, went up for a shot and … the ball traveled about two feet before it fell pitiably short of the rim. I couldn’t even clank it. And I used to be a decent shot.

Where’s my phone? Where’s my iPad? What day is it? Who are these people? And yet I can recite the starting lineup of the 1973 Los Angeles Lakers.

I guess I thought that if I kept wearing blue jeans, frequented fast food joints and knew a few “cool” phrases – “how’s your bad self?” and “that’s what she said” – I was going to coast quite smoothly deep into the 21st century.

Now, I’m not saying that I have reached total decrepitude. I’m just saying … wait .. what was I about to say?