Senior Citizenship – At What Cost?

I became 50 years old this year. So what, I retorted defiantly. I've got lots of impressive company: Woody Allen, Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicklaus, Robert Redford, Thomas Wolfe, to mention but a few. I remember when we were all in our 30 and 40s together. We got through those decades without any problems. Big deal. So now we're just going to slip on through this one. Nobody will even notice.

Except the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons). They sent me a letter and a membership application a month before my birthday. My close friends probably don't even know my age. How did this group find out? I guess Woody and Jane and the guys got theirs too. I don't even have to retire—just be 50. Only $5 per year. Great benefits: Senior Citizen discounts on drugs, motels movies and so on. Practically speaking, it makes sense to join.

Never! I don't mind being 50, 60 or even 70, but I'm not going to register myself as a "senior citizen" because some group of quidnuncs arbitrarily selected age 50 as a qualifier for what it perceives to be the primordial populace. What does that ambiguous term mean, anyway? Senior to whom? Even a two-year-old child can be a senior citizen. After all, he's senior to a one-year-old and why must I be a citizen? If I were Charlie Watts (The Rolling Stones) in the US on a temporary work permit would I be ineligible? But, believe me, I know the group the AARP is referring to, and I'm not ready to join them yet, nor are many others over 50.

I'm not ready and neither are Woody and the others. Maybe one day I'll rise that prunce juice fueled tour bus to Miami, but not this year. If the AARP knew anything about me at all except my age, it would not have extended me this lefthanded invitation to antiquity.

Surely, if they were aware that I run 20 miles a week, watch Arsenio Hall, David Letterman, and "In Living Color," eschew "The Tonight Show," read and look at Playboy without experiencing cardiac symptoms, can facilely expound on the significance (or lack thereof) of entities such as David Byrne, Sinead O'Conner (and pronounce her name correctly), White Snake, Ton Loc and Dennis Hopper, and never wear wide striped shirts, checkered pants (simultaneously) at armpit level, and white, crepe-soled shoes, they would immediately retract the offer.

I will admit to being cognizant that, statistically, I may only have about 22 more years and I confess to a new predilection for "relative longevity purchasing": avoid buying items such as cars or major appliances that may last longer than I will, and being sure any trees I procure are very fast growing but, on the other hand, limiting my acquisition of pets to only those who will probably transcend my existence (hence, my new sea tortoise and parrot).

But then, this behavior, I feel, is simply an example of sensibility, and as long as it does not affect my taste in shoes, my immunity to senioritis is still viable.

And quite obviously, the AARP has never seen my wife, who although she is within a couple of years of their magic number, exhibits all the physical and mental attributes of youth—though she did recently frighten the daylights out of me by lingering a bit too long (coincidentally) by the blue-rinse shelf in a cosmetic department. We will never be the Poster Couple for the National Liverspot Society and we'll never have our names on our mailboxes, "The Coskreys, Bob and Barbara," (it doesn't even sound right—it would have to be something like Gus and Myrtle or Ed and Thelma). We also have made a blood pact to never own a dog smaller than a large cat or that in any way at all resembles either a mouse with a thyroid problem or Don Knotts.

I don't think that the AARP would feel comfortable at all with my seasoned, yet decidedly hip, image any more than I would be at east trying to adjust myself to their somewhat sterile one.

In fact, I have a very uneasy sensation that if, through torture, or possibly as a result of brain damage, I did become a member, the AARP would be compelled to use all its powers and fiendish devices to try to revamp me in its own image or risk public mortification.

I would awake one bursitic morning more concerned with the universal blight or irregularity than the recession of my sexual drive, which has become permanently jammed in "sexual park," or even the less terminal, but more implicative, "sexual neutral." After watching the video tape of last night's "Golden Girls" (it comes on too late for me now) I ease into my 1953 Studebaker and immediately realize there is an object blocking my view of the windshield—the steering wheel. Apparently, I have shrunk six or eight inches since yesterday. No problem. To my amazement, I find that simply by slumping down in the seat a little, I can see well enough to drive by looking beneath the steering wheel. I am compelled by an inexorable urge to go to a cafeteria (even though it's only 10:30 a.m.). Realizing that my one-way ticket to fossil city has already been punched, I feel that I must take advantage of any urge, no matter what the consequences, so I'm off. Several hours and 15 miles later, I cautiously approach the mall, with a long line or horn-blowing, screaming young people behind me. What in the Hell are they making that racket for? "Shut up you mindless whippersnappers," I yell out the window, quoting my hero almost verbatim (Gabby Hayes in "Riders of the Purple Sage," 1940).

Being a senior citizen, I am also conscious of my need—more really a responsibility, I guess—to plan ahead (the old whatever-you-call-it…memory…takes a little vacation sometimes), so knowing that I eventually have to take a left to pull into the mall parking lot, I have diligently kept my left turn signal on ever since I left home. God, these young people drive like morons. You ought to see the piles of wrecked cars behind me. After finishing my Senior Citizen's Special of the Day—cream of roughage—I amble on over to one of the mall benches, where I sit a spell, watch the pretty young girls walk by and try to remember why I'm doing it—must be some sort of evolutionary vestigial behavior. Some female friends of my son spot me and come over, one of them making my morning complete with her "You're certainly remarkable for your age" remark. "I'm only 50 years old, you 'Sally Sleep Around'," I think to myself. "Where did I get that 19th century epithet?" As I leave I hear them whispering, "Wow, a senior citizen. Should he be out like this by himself?"

"No, he ought to be in a home strapped to a bed. Did you see how he was looking at us, the dirty old creep?"

Could people actually be saying these things about me? Maybe I misunderstood. I stopped in the mall hearing aid center. My hearing was okay, I just needed my ear hair trimmed.

Remembering might right turn into the driveway, I concentrate on keeping the turn signal blinking appropriately and arrive home just in time to catch the final six holes of a golf tournament. My wife is busy in the kitchen putting up preserves. "It's me, Momma," I rasp in an unintended mimicry of Walter Brennan. "Man, this senior citizenry is serious business," I think.

My wife responds, "Okay, Poppa, (muttering under her breath: So what, you lifeless sack of flatulence)."

"I'll show you, you old bag," I think. "I'll find your senior citizen card and tear it to pieces."

Calming myself, I continue to watch the golf, until two straight birdies by Lee Trevino precipitate rapid heart palpitations and I put in my "Lawrence Welk—Raw" video.

But since I have not joined the AARP, and have no intention of doing so, these things will never befall me, because Woody, Jane, Dustin, Jack, Robert, Tom and I are dealing with the decades on our own terms. Oh sure, we'll grow old, and we'll probably not even do it gracefully—but perhaps now and then, graciously, sometimes gratefully, often gratingly, and more times than not, gratuitously. However, we will not do it burdened with the unjust stigma of "senior citizens," but as free-lance, non-affiliated, time-ripened members of society, and if we're forced by the BHC (Bureau of Human Chronology) to register our names it will be as age-neutralized citizens. To all who qualify, come join us!