As old as I am now I feel very much like I’d love to go dancing.

For Rachel Cohn, her walker and her health problems are frustrating because she wants to be out seeing people and doing things. Cohn lives at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda.

I had a birthday a few days ago, 99 years old. My daughter made a remarkable birthday party for me. She had all my friends, and my granddaughter from Pittsburgh came here with her little 4-year-old boy. He’s a very young man now. It was lovely. I wasn’t able to be active or help to do anything at all, I just was like an ornament. I had a beautiful blue dress on that I was given. It was all accordion pleated, a blue neck, and I had a cameo. We had a beautiful day.

I was born in Manchester, England, 15th of June, 1889. I was only a child when I left England, about 10, 11 years old. We all came to America, to Brooklyn.

It was a very happy home. There were three girls and one boy. My father and mother were very happy. I was always an active girl, always a little sports girl, played tennis and so on. I was always doing something. I was never idle.

I had lovely, lovely girlhood days, beautiful girlhood days. The boys were so beautiful, so lovely, so gentlemanly, so fine. Different than what they are today.

I can come right explicit and tell you, now, a boy takes a girl out, he wants to go to bed with her right away. Not in my days, never! They never took advantage of you. Even if they thought they’d give you a kiss, they wouldn’t do that. They took you by the elbow, down the sidewalk. They were very polite and very gentlemanly, and that’s what I like. I don’t like the freedoms here.

I lived in Brooklyn many years, got married in Brooklyn. I did a lot of charitable work. I was on the board of directors of the hospital. I made a lot of money for them and did a lot of things.

My husband was in the furniture business. My son graduated from UCLA, and he met a nice girl, and he remained here. And then my other son came with his wife, and I used to come here every other year to visit them.

I moved here after my husband died 30 years ago. He was 70 years old, my husband. He met with an accident, he was run over and killed. It was a shock. Sad. I worried terribly. I tried to be realistic about things and so forth, but it wore off gradually. I kept busy. I did a lot of work for the hospital, and I was greatly rewarded, met lovely people, had wonderful experiences.

All of my life I always kept busy. I was always socializing, going to the opera, going to the ballet, going out with friends, going out all the time. I belonged to quite a few organizations.

Oh, I loved dancing, I loved it. All kinds, hesitation, the rumba, the waltz. I wasn’t very much on the jazz. I don’t like the ragtime, nothing of that.

As old as I am now I feel very much like I’d love to go dancing. I’d love to go to the opera. I’d love to go to a show. I’ve got it in me. I want to go, and I feel very unhappy because I can’t go to these places. I feel very sad, very sad.

Some people don’t like to go anywhere. They’re stuck-in-the-mud people. I’m ready to go out all the time.

There’s going to be a dance right here in the home tonight, and I’m going to be an observer. I can’t join in dancing, not any more, although I love to.

When I see them dance, I just get weary to think I can’t do it. I’m angry at myself. I want to do everything but I can’t.

Even now when I see a woman with a walker I will jump up and open the door for her, but before I get up she’s already in. I’m always ready to do something, you see, and I can’t do a lot of things. I wish I was only healthier.

I’m blessed that I had three children and they’re so devoted and so understanding. They’re wonderful. Whenever I go out to luncheons with the children, I feel very happy.

When I’m at a party and we’re sitting around there, I give this toast:

“Here’s to you, as good as you are, and here’s to me as bad as I am. But as good as you are, and as bad as I am, I’m as good as you are as bad as I am.”