What have I learned in my 53 years? That I shouldn’t listen to strangers who accost me in the street | Zoe Williams

I was performing an ordinary and not at all illegal cycling manoeuvre recently when a guy in a white van said: “You’re too old to be that stupid.” It was a critique so devastating that I was 10 minutes down the road before I even examined its mechanics. What is the right age to make a right-hand turn? I had also previously assumed that, wearing a bike helmet, I was invisible on the road. I’d come to think of myself as a ninja or a sprite, moving like smoke through traffic, protected only by my agility and smarts. Dispiritingly, it seems I was perfectly visible and other vehicles were just choosing not to notice when I wanted to turn right.

Anyway, I was on the way to meet a friend and, when I described this ageist abuse to him, he said, having quite a theatrical turn of phrase: “Darling, you’re not old enough to be this stupid.”

I should have been mollified by that and put the episode behind me. Instead, I described it to my 17-year-old, who now refers to it like a yardstick any time I do something stupid. What’s the right age at which to miss a train? How about also missing the return train? If you can’t figure out how to unplug a dishwasher, should you be in your early 30s, or would 41 be correct? Is there a tech inversion by which you can be too young to be that stupid, but no age is too old, given that, the older you are, the more obvious it is that all your unnamable skills were amassed for an era that no longer exists?

Nope, all that notwithstanding, you should still go through life getting better at it. There is no misstep in the world for which 53 is not too old. Apparently, this gets funnier and funnier the more situations to which it is applied.

The wisdom I should have acquired across these acres of time? When someone says a mean thing and you don’t want it to stick, try not telling anyone.