You know you are old when someone in the T Mobile shop grabs your mobile phone and in one nanosecond corrects the annoying digital behavior that has so plagued your life. Why didn’t I know that a half-moon shape concealed in a pop up menu sends calls directly to voicemail…or not? I, of course, opted for not. Yes, there was a 15 minute wait while other patrons actually purchased phones. Never mind. I was satisfied.

Armed with superior knowledge, I rolled out into the open world. The sort of world that produces stunning grilled cheese sandwiches at the redoubtable Mission Cheese on Valencia Street. Of course, being an old guy, eating more than half a grilled cheese sandwich is never wise. So, with 50% of lunch stuffed in my book bag, off I went to the main event of the day.

We assembled in the lobby of Sha’ar Zahav congregation while several members played an arousing klezmer set. Then off we went. Marching straight up Dolores Street then zigzagging from Market Street into San Francisco’s main civic square. The latter goes by several names, including United Nations Plaza. And it is right in front of San Francisco’s domed City Hall.

I wonder what it is to be Dianne Feinstein right now. One of two California US senators, she has ascended a podium to address 10,000 people like me. Yes, it is quite a crowd. I have already lost my Sha’ar Zahav cohorts and crowded up against a steel barricade to get a better view. I can barely see her. But I can hear her. And I am grateful, and slightly impressed, that she has bothered turning up at all. And I am painfully aware that one autumn day in 1978, as a councilperson in the city hall right behind her, she witnessed two shootings. San Francisco’s mayor. San Francisco’s first gay councilperson. Sen. Feinstein has never been very keen on loose guns.

Neither am I. Which is why everyone is here. Not just here, but all over the country. Aerial news photos of San Francisco’s gun-control rally will look quite impressive on telly. But what’s less impressive, or more impressive from another perspective, is that small towns have also gathered citizens in force to protest the gun madness that afflicts the nation. I was there, I turned up, and then after a while I left. I had been counted. That seemed the most important. What I had done had counted too.

Or maybe it hadn’t. That’s the thing at this age. After the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, citizens felt much the way they do today. Stop this madness. Get high-powered guns out of the hands of people who haven’t been trained, screened, or vetted. But the NRA plays the long game. And they keep winning. It’s enough to make one despair. It is also enough to make one keep trying.