I was in my early 60s when I heard someone call someone else stupid for the first time in my laugh. It was my daughter, in her late 20s, who called someone else stupid.

I was shocked to my core. Eventually, when I thought about it, I realized that what I had struggled with most of my life was other people's stupidity.

When I returned to South Africa some 8 years ago (I was there just under 5 years), I called some people stupid. People around me were shocked. One just didn't call other people stupid. My sister was outraged.

That said, I never thought of old people as stupid - even when I was very young. I certainly never heard anyone old referred to as stupid. Rather, I heard about people coming from good families, of being very well off (the upper class way of referring to 'rich' people), and so on.

The older people I knew (and the parents of my own peer group) were either business owners, successful entertainers or amongst the top 1% in terms of professions. It never occurred to me than any of them were stupid.

As I grew up in a world where everyone had the latest of everything, anyway, I cannot imagine anyone refusing to have any sort of appliance. Everybody drove stick because there' was no such thing as an automatic car in South Africa, so it's difficult to compare.

I did have poor relatives, though, and they thought about things very differently. It wasn't so much that they were stupid as they were ignorant. They simply weren't exposed to things that people who had more wealth were exposed to.

Wealthy people, no matter how old they are, are seldom invisible. And the way one tells is the way they speak and the way they dress.

So, I think invisibility comes when one no longer stands out from the crowd. When one is young, one has the looks. When one is older, that fades.

And with all of that said, yes, you're right. People are no more polite to each other, and they are very, very self-involved. That's why so many of the young are so depressed. When one's eyes are entirely focused on oneself, one tends to be miserable.