Today is Respect for the Aged Day in Japan — but not here. On this special day the Japanese return home to visit and pay respect to their elders, and volunteers help out in their neighborhoods by making and distributing free lunch boxes to older citizens. Entertainments are provided by teenagers and children, and special nostalgic television programs are broadcast. We don’t have a Respect for the Aged Day for the obvious reason that, as Rodney Dangerfield liked to say, we don’t get no respect. There was Grandparents Day, just last week on the 13th, but if you don’t happen to be a grandparent, but just old, you are out of luck. Nobody sends flowers or a card, still less a free lunch, although anyone who has survived all the hazards of life for so long surely deserves some recognition. I’ve been told, by very senior seniors, that things used to be different and that age used to command respect, although their memories may be playing tricks. Old people get less respect nowadays than old