Katie Couric's Notebook: "Cute"
Video: This is one busiest travel weeks of the year. Millions will be going over the river and through the woods - or through the gauntlet of airline security - to grandmother's house. Or to visit the kids or the in-laws.
We'll all be spending more time with family.
And chances are lots of grandparents and great grandparents - will hear themselves described, again and again, with a word usually saved for babies:
"Cute."
It's a word I've used -- and it never bothered me until I started hearing it applied to my own 86-year-old father and 83-year old mother. It's sounds sweet. But isn't it condescending? Other cultures revere older people as wise. When did we start dismissing OUR elders as "cute"?
With more baby boomers staying active longer, how about thinking of aging Americans as dynamic? Or creative? Or inspiring? Anything but cute.
The only thing that might be worse would be to call them..."perky."
That's a page from my notebook