It’s barely just begun, but are you enjoying the 2020 Presidential Campaign as much as I am? Or are you not a fellow political junkie? Trust me, there’s good stuff there: Two nights of Democratic debates with a total of 20 candidates, any one of whom I would find preferable to the current situation. And there are even a few more who didn’t make the cut first time but could still do so. Smart, articulate, brimming with ideas; as a bench, all give me hope.

Along with politics, I am also a language enthusiast. I enjoy the words being added to the lexicon during the campaign. We already were aware of “mansplaining,” which any woman alive in the last hundred years could recognize immediately, but after last night’s second televised event – more raucous than the first rather polite offering – we met “manterrupting.” Again, instantly recognizable.

I have been mulling over whether there could be similar terms for what older people encounter. In a conversation a while back with an adult person I know, an adult but not one as old as I – who is? – I remarked that increasingly I find myself being interrupted in mixed-age group conversations as if what I’m trying to add has so little consequence that it doesn’t warrant slowing down the rest of the conversation. “When did I get so boring?” I wondered. “Yes,” she said. “I know what you mean. And how about when entire conversations go by around you as if you weren’t there?”

Did we do that to older people in the past? Were we that rude? There needs to be a term for that. “Elderterrupt” perhaps or “elderignore.” No wonder elders tend to cluster together instead of mixing in with all ages.

Everyone needs to emulate one individual I see on the news frequently who refuses to be interrupted: “Excuse me, I am speaking here . . .”