You talkin' to me?!

OK.  I’m thinking some sensitivity training is in order.

You know what I mean – that sort of interminable, eye-rolling in-service whereby here-to-fore know-it-alls learn that they don’t know so much after all.  What used to be OK, is now taboo.  What was once funny ain’t funny no more.

I’m talking about all you non-boomers.  Yeah, you.  All you “yes ma’am”-ers and “can I help you to the car?” people who think you’re immune to the calendar and not subject to the clock. 

What?  Do I sound defensive?  Well too, too bad!  Too bad I say!

It appears you must listen to me, not only because, yes, I am OLDER than you are, but also because you are outnumbered by me and my geriatric friends.  And…we have all the money!  Ha!

Turns out, according to the Wall Street Journal, in an article titled, “How to Market to an Aging Boomer: Flattery, Subterfuge and Euphemism,” some forward-thinking mercenary types have already begun the process of age-ifying themselves and their businesses.  And they’ve done it on the down low.

That’s right.  “Companies are making typefaces larger, lowering store shelves to make them more accessible and avoiding yellows and blues in packaging—two colors that don’t appear as sharply distinct to older eyes

And here’s the kicker:  They’re doing so surreptitiously!

Hahahaha!  I love it!  They’re afraid of offending us!  We’ve got ‘em on the run.

The visual of this phenomenon is classic:  An army of “older adults,” led by Madge, or Clint Eastwood, or Statler & Waldorf (those crabby old-men Muppets who hate everything), or wait!  I know!  Led by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards!  Oh!  My God!

Keith with his corpse-like countenance, cigarette dangling and Mick, gyrating in leather pants and a sequined jacket with no shirt underneath.  Coming at ya, singing “I can’t get no satisfaction!”  No!  “Please allow me to introduce myself; I’m a man of wealth and fame!”  That would run the fear of the wrath of the moldering up the backs of those smart-alecky “younger adults.”

Here we come, a horde of “golden agers” with bulging wallets sweeping down onto the plains occupied by smug and unsuspecting adolescent types who are so flippin’ sure of everything.

The good news is, of course, that everybody likes larger typeface.  Guess what?  It’s pleasant to read without squinting. 

And how lovely that Sherwin-Williams and other retailers have quietly adapted to aging customers, even if they just did it for the money.  

CVS Caremark Corp. retrofitted its stores with carpeting to reduce slipping.  They lowered shelves from 72 inches to 60 inches and opted for more natural light in stores to improve visibility.  They eliminated curbs from store entrances and painted existing curbs yellow to heighten awareness.

Get this:  Some stores positioned magnifying glasses in aisles that carry products that use lots of fine print, like household cleaners, hair color and cold medicine.  Reading glasses are getting snazzier, too, now that the chain updates styles more frequently.

They snuck all that stuff right by us unsuspecting geezers!  It’s a good thing too, because we are a touchy bunch.  Don’t be reminding us that we’re getting on!

I say go ahead and flatter me.  Neither one of us is fooled.  I’m getting older and so are you.  But I appreciate the niceties of your telling me that 60 isn’t 60 and wrinkly is not really wrinkly at all.  These creases are not “age lines,” or “maturity tracks.”  They are “expression lines.”  Nice!

That’s right.  Bring on the euphemisms!  Tell me I’m healthy and active and full of life.  I know I am, and if you’re pretending, that’s OK.

Go ahead ADT; market your medical-alert system to us codgers as “Companion Services.”  Sweet.

Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s Depends, the “adult diapers” of the past, have had a makeover in new TV ads with smiling 50 year old actors: “Looks and fits like underwear.  Protects like nothing else.”  So much to look forward to!.

Don’t forget – 76 million boomers account for about half of total U.S. consumer spending.  With longer life expectancy than previous seniors, we are projected to spend an additional $50 billion by the end of the decade.

So talk nice to us.

It’s worth it, right?  For both of us.

Aging Gracefully in the Era of Technology

Just like most Boomers, I’m game for almost anything that will keep me alert and able to maintain my self-respect. 

But more than that, I won’t be content to sit at the table pushing peas around my plate while younger people take over the dialogue.  I want to participate.   

Some might say, “Hooray for you, Carolyn.  You’re a model of an active aging person.  We’re going to call you ‘spry.’  We want to be just like you when we’re irrelevant!” 

Well, thanks, but realistically, there could be a down side to a spunky attitude.  Here it is:   I will be in the conversation, even when I shouldn’t be.  I’ll misread the body language and facial expressions of those around me, persist in prattling on, and imagine myself witty and erudite until I’ve driven my loved ones to conspire against me. 

They’ll stare pointedly at each other across the custard and begin keeping records of my non-sequiters and odd behavior.  Soon we’ll be taking field trips to lovely settings where all my needs will be met and I can make new friends quickly. 

Oh no, no, no.  No. 

I will not go gently into that residential community catering to a lifestyle which meets my level of care, budget, social, and recreational preferences.  I’m learning to play a musical instrument and working all the crosswords.  I'm eating my broccoli, blue berries, and omega-3.   

And I’m following with interest an up-and-coming invention:  The trans-cranial direct current stimulation device.  That’s tDCS to you.  We’ll refer to it here as its creator does – the GoFlow. 

Not to be confused with that other clever do-it-yourself device, the Flowbie, the GoFlow comprises a headband with a pair of electrodes dangling off its sides.  It’s branded with a lightning bolt and designed to pump 2 milliamps of electric current to your brain.  It won’t cut your hair, but it could curl it. 

Its inventor, Matt Sornson, a Michigan college student (who majors in marketing, by the way), follows a long line of scientists who have experimented with stimulating the brain, even attempting to cure illnesses with electricity.  He’s looking to induce the “state of flow” tapped into by athletes when they trigger a runner’s high. 

Sornson began testing the device on himself in hopes that it would facilitate his learning a complex software program more quickly.  After eight days of electrical stimulation at 1/500^th the juice needed to power a 100-watt light bulb, he stated he was unsure if the GoFlow had affected his learning, but “it definitely feels like I have a six- or seven-cup caffeine buzz without feeling jittery at all!”  There you go. 

That’s just the sort of thing an engaging senior citizen needs – enough stimulation to keep her perky without the telltale signs of drug-induced euphoria.  Bring it! 

Sornson’s plan is to develop the first low-cost commercial tDCS kit.  At a retail cost of $99 the kit will come with a 60-pack of disposable electrodes, a placement map of the cranium, and a 5-milliamp safety fuse, in case something should go awry.  Good idea. 

At that price, a quick cost-benefit analysis tips the scales away from Starbucks and into the realm of jitter-free living. 

But I can’t help wondering if Master Sornson patterned his cranial placement map on L.N. Fowler’s “bust of superior form, marked with the divisions of the [brain] in accordance with [his] research and varied experience.”  

When the snake oil business fell off, Fowler practiced phrenology, based on the theory that lumps on the skull reflect a person’s character.  He crafted a ceramic figure of a hairless human head, plotting the regions where one might locate, examine, and evaluate bumps, believing they corresponded to parallel areas of brain function.  

In a chart akin to those in the butcher shop locating select cuts of meat, Fowler detailed provinces of the skull such as Language, Human Nature, and Order, along with Acquisitiveness (to include saving and hoarding), Secretiveness (from reserve to evasion), and Sublimity, which he explains as a “sense of the terrific.”  In Fowler’s world, protuberances in critical areas of the noggin revealed desirable traits or flaws of disposition. 

Before phrenology was dismissed as a pseudo-science, folks aspiring to self-improvement could hire a practitioner to whack them in the appropriate position on the noddle, thereby raising a lump and creating space for the brain to develop the sought-after trait.   

Hmmm. 

Maybe I’ll sit quietly after all.

Is Time Running Out for the Beautiful People?

Here’s the beginning of our ignominious end - NBC News anchor Brian Williams teased viewers this week with the headline of an ominous lead story coming up on the nightly news:  certain hip replacements are failing and will have to come out. 

Easy for him to say.  Seems thousands of bionic men and women now face the daunting prospect of enduring a double surgical procedure to remove and replace their…replacements. 

So what’s next for Jane Fonda and all the rest of us boomers who’ve succumbed to deteriorating joints and metal-on-metal replacements for our ailing bones?  Jane’s a perfect representative of the post-boom phenomenon.  She’s had knee and hip replacement along with back surgery.  She’s 72, healthy, and looking great.  But that may be more aptly attributed to her cosmetic surgery.  She’s owned up to having the bags under her eyes deflated.  

What if all manner of high-tech enhancements developed and implanted over decades of the boomers’ era turn out to have a shelf life, as it were?  What if it’s not just Jane Fonda’s hip and knee replacements that will need recycling?  What about her baggy eyes? 

More than a few folks have had similar elective procedures.  Sure they’re non-essential and totally vain.  But are they susceptible to the ticking clock, too?  Are we approaching the Y2K of the self-conscious aging elite? 

If we don’t get this under control, we could wake up to the luddites’ nightmare:  All our technology turns on us, rebelling in the most unfortunate and unattractive ways. 

Remember Eddie Murphy in the remake of “The Nutty Professor”?  He had what we all want – a magic elixir – one sip and voila!  Thin!  Sexy!  Funny!  But of course, no Fountain of Fitness can exist in the real world. 

Murphy’s Professor Clump, as his newly svelte alter ego Buddy Love, seized the opportunity to pursue the girl of his dreams, the one his flabby, unfortunate self could not hope to impress.  But alas, in a crucial, public moment, just like Jane’s time-sensitive hip, Buddy’s potion breaks down.  Before our eyes, the professor bulges back to his prodigious former self, body part by gelatinous body part. 

Given the impending expiration of our man-made yet mortal appendages and restitutions, we could find ourselves in the same discomfiting circumstance. 

What if nose jobs expired, for example?  Right in the middle of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” Kim’s pretty proboscis might just revert to its original, lumpy form.  A whole new kind of reality could present itself if the Plastic Surgeons of America sent a recall notice for the scaffolding underpinning Bruce Jenner's face work.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Imagine all the serene conversations in Hollywood bistros and suburban country clubs when, out of nowhere, a timer goes off and dozens of lifted foreheads advance to their rightful, age-appropriate positions, coming to rest somewhere in the neighborhood of one’s delicately plucked eyebrows.  In Washington, Nancy Pelosi would blink, giving Republicans in Congress false hope of victory. 

Why, those eyebrows themselves would travel into real estate appropriated by tacked-wide-open eyes, creating uninvited squints even in the shade of Carrera sunglasses. 

What if Botox … oh, never mind.  It does expire.  We know already that.  The wax melts and you’ve gotta keep getting shot up if you want to maintain that expressionless guise of indifference. 

Otherwise, Joan Rivers might disappear altogether. 

Hair transplants!  That would be hilarious!  What if those perfect plugs just unplugged, on cue, like so many spontaneous champagne corks, no matter where the “plug-ee” might find himself?  Like an electrified porcupine coming undone on the fairway, or the boardroom!   

In an apocalyptic scenario, voluptuous lips would shrink back to their original, severe Frau Bluchers.  Silicon breasts would collapse leaving folds of skin and yards of unfilled fabric limp in their wake.  All those pinned-back ears would once again flap free. 

Reminiscent of the cages being flung open at the zoo, all God’s creatures would run in gleeful abandon, returning to their natural states. OK, maybe not gleeful. 

I decline to reveal where I might wind up in such a scenario.  Parts of me could be susceptible to the fall of the empire, shall we say?  But which parts and where they’ll land remains a confidential, eyes only, need-to-know Top Secret.   

Suffice it to say that I keep the joints greased with glucosamine and the clocks wound tight.  Vigilant.  Ever vigilant.                                                                                                  

Getting Over It --- Whatever "It" Is

I've just been reading Deepak Chopra on happiness.  You know what that means.  I've gotta get over something.

I might be getting a little hypochondriac-ish.  Gotta get over that.  But I have a lot of stuff going wrong with me.  I was playing on my Wii and stretched a tendon in the arch of my foot past the point of no return.  That's a kick in the pants.

What if I'm on my way to dowager-ville?  Some people gain weight in their hips or thighs.  I might gain weight on my back!  Up high.  Oh no!Quasimoto!  With hips and thighs.

I've got a a floater in my left eye.  It does as its moniker suggests, drifting in and out of my field of vision just when the six pack abs commercial comes on.

My mood - mostly okay.  I quit saying, "Fine," when people ask how I'm doing.  Partly because George Carlin said it's inane to say "fine," and partly because I've realigned my responses to more nearly match reality.  "Fine" could be overstating it.  Sometimes I say "groovy."  I haven't been truly groovy in many years, but I enjoy the reaction.

But am I happy?  Sure.  Except, the more I know the less lee-way there is.  Smaller margin of error.

I remember in The Big Chill, Mary Kay Place is talking to JoBeth Williams about the men she meets.  She says with her experiences she can size men up in the first 10 seconds after she meets them and know whether they're worth any effort.  JoBeth says, "Well, at least you give them a fair shot."

That's me.  I can zero in on the salient pretty quickly now.  With age and experience comes insight, sometimes mistaken for wisdom.  It just doesn't take that long to size up the newest ride and figure out if it's worth buying a ticket.

But often enough I'm wrong, and I love a surprise.  For example, I can cook!  I'm pretty good at it.  Who knew?  Check out The Flavor Bible. 

I still hang out with kids for the wonder.  Dogs and cats rock.  Simple and deep all at once. 

Often joy comes in the familiar:  Seeing my husband peek around the living room corner again this evening.  Returning to Yellowstone.  Watching The Sixth Sense the sixth time.  Replaying Achmed the Dead Terrorist and laughing like an Alzheimer's patient.  "Silence! I keel you!"

Can you hear me Deepak?  I'm happy I tell you.  I'm over it, whatever it was.

Emergency Room

I didn't exactly cry in the Emergency Room. I was a visitor after all, not a patient.

Still, sitting on a rolling stool in the ER while the doctor set up to perform an ultrasound on my neighbor, I was overcome...by fear.

I can feel my chin soften, my lower face sag. My eyes fill with tears. I look down to hide my struggle. I remind myself that I am not the first fearful person to cry in an ER.

But I'm not afraid for my neighbor. I'm afraid for myself.

My neighbor is 75, widowed, alone, belly full of radiating pain. Only a step-son on her list of contacts.

I am not even 60, married, happy, in a rewarding career. I live in a warm house with a caring husband, a dog and a cat. (His son, my step-son, is 24 and living with his mother---another story.)

What have I got to be afraid of?

Doctors and nurses and orderlies (Do they still exist?) pass me in an array of pastel with business on their minds. A Candy Striper (Okay, a Comfort Service Volunteer) asks if I'd like some water. Yes! She brings water with that wonderful hospital crushed ice and a cellophane-wrapped packet of graham crackers. Pathetically, I drink, peel back the cellophane and eat on the stool, distracted, feeling a little better. Another patient rolls through the sliding glass doors, morose, an EMT pushing his wheelchair.

The doctor draws the curtain back and smiles at me. I can return to my neighbor's side. She smiles at me too. "They've ruled out gall bladder," she says waving the arm with the blood pressure cuff, not the bruised one with the IV drip and the shunt.

When she speaks she lifts her head off the pillowless bed and the monitor behind her shows a fluctuation in her pulse. I watch her blood pressure rise on the screen from moderately high (in my estimation) to high...what number will finally trigger an alarm?

I go out again when technicians come with a portable x-ray machine, set up, step away, tell my neighbor not to breathe, and to breathe.

One of my neighbor's friends arrives. Seventy-five, creased pants and a cashmere V-neck over starched white shirt, YSL glasses. The three of us chat. Movies, shopping, home maintenance. Care in this hospital. "Oh, they're very attentive," says my neighbor. "They're very thorough."

"I remember sitting in this Emergency Room with Ed before he died," says her friend. "We were here 12 hours before they put him in a room. Twelve hours and I became quite a bitch," she says with a rueful smile. "Then they moved him."

It grows dark outside the double sliding glass doors. Drizzle falls on the EMTs readying their van for the next outing.

I decide to hand my neighbor off to her friend. "I think I'll go," I say. "I've got to go to the store and fix dinner."

"Oh, thank you so much! Thank you for coming. Thank you. You have my keys? Would you turn a light on in the house tonight? Oh thank you!"

As I walk toward the double doors I keep my head down. Sooner than I expect they hiss open and I fairly run to my car.