(Some thoughts on growing old gracefully. Or not.)

This week, I hit a milesto…strike that.

This week, a milestone hit me. This week, I turned fifty-five.

Fifty-five. I am a speed limit.

I know, I know. Lots of adults pooh-pooh adult birthdays. After all, they say, we’re not children anymore. Birthdays are for children, only. Children, we’re told, should be seen and not heard, whereas adults, we’re told, should be obscene and not absurd. Although I could’ve misread that.

So grown-ups will employ that irritating, all-knowing cant of the head, purse their lips and stare mistily over your shoulder, and assume that tweed-jacket-with-elbow-patches look that means ‘I’m about to impart wisdom all up in here.’ Then they’ll say things like “oh, I quit counting birthdays” and “after a certain age, birthdays don’t matter anymore.” You should know a couple of things about these people:

They’re old.
They’re lying.

I think it’s fine for adults to celebrate, or at least acknowledge, one’s birthday…within reason. I mean, you have to make some allowances for being a grown-up. When you’re fifty-five, you can just run up to total strangers in restaurants, hold up your fingers, and yell “I’m this many!” Be fair. While you’re working out all the 55-year-10-finger schematic issues, their bisque’s getting cold.

True: you might get away with such behavior at a Chuck E. Cheese. But if you’re celebrating your fifty-plus birthday at Chuck E. Cheese, well … as Joe Biden might put it: I got three words for you – deep therapy.

And once you get past a certain age, forget about inviting a bunch of friends over to spend the night. That’s just not going to end well; plus, it could come back to haunt you if you ever decide to enter the ministry, or run for public office. (Once you’re in public office, however, sleepovers are practically expected.)

In America, your age is everybody’s business. For over four decades now, marketing companies have been asking me what age group I’m in. This is a critical piece of data for marketers, something they call ‘demographics’ (literal translation: ‘number of active credit cards’). And now, I’ve graduated from the ’45 to 54‘ age group to the next one – the penultimate one – the ’55 and Over‘ group. (literal translation: ‘He’s still breathing, or what? Hold a mirror in front of his mouth. Or an active credit card.’)

So at fifty-five, I expect to see a whole new onslaught of targeted, tempting, pre-geriatric offers, not to mention a full-on frontal assault by the membership department at AARP (literal translation: ‘the Borg collective from Star Trek, but with walkers’). That never-resting gang of mercenary marketers has been relentlessly hammering me since I was about eight, possibly because they misinterpreted my age group after I used a compound noun. (literal translation: ‘something found in a prison yard’)

Month in, month out, with military precision, AARP mails me a thick welcome kit, complete with personalized membership card and several thousand exclamation points. This has been going on since, roughly, the year America landed on the moon, an event which so confused our planet that Billy Preston became the fifth Beatle. (Shortly thereafter, the Beatles broke up, but that was George Bush’s fault.)

But the relentless ‘Geezer Nation’ ad assault from AARP is just one wave in the endless battle for my budget. I have achieved the age when the (e)mailbox fills with very conflicted marketing messages; the Captains of Commerce are sending me some seriously mixed signals. For example, in any given week, I’ll get such disjointed “who are they talking to?” calls to action as these:

Why I should diversify my portfolio with gold
Why I should abandon all hope and dump my mortgage


Econo-sized 5-gallon tubs of once-a-day Viagra tablets (discreetly delivered)
‘Don’t put if off!’ discounts from our tasteful selection of customized caskets (featuring our bestselling model, the Eterno-Wrap! Now available in your choice of irrelevant colors!)


Fabulous lake-front property beginning at only $750,000
Fabulous penny-pinching weekly bargains on canned meat

If they must mix their messages, couldn’t they at least try to be helpful? For example, to brighten up the casket spiel, why not borrow from the Viagra ad?

‘Eterno-Wrap is intended for the treatment of Erect Dysfunction, also known as extended horizontality, or persistent deadness. Discuss your status with your doctor to ensure that you are healthy enough for death. Do not stay in this box if you maintain a pulse lasting for more than four hours. Side-effects of not being consistently alive may include a sudden decrease in vision (not to mention heartbeat), chronic tardiness, and a tendency for people to say, “aw, don’t he look natural.” In some cases, you may be mistaken for comedian Stephen Wright or suddenly find yourself eligible to vote.’

And here’s some free medical advice from an on-the-cusp geezer: if, while you’re dead, you experience any nausea or sexual discomfort, please contact your physician immediately.

And then, by all means, contact the nearest network television executive.