Will you still feed me when I’m 64?
When you are 63 years old, hardly anybody knows it. When you turn 64, everybody knows it. Don’t believe me? Just wait. I turned 64 in May, and I’ve never gotten as much snail mail, as many targeted internet ads or as many telemarketing calls in my life. Suddenly, everyone is interested in my thoughts on Medicare and IRAs.
Or maybe they just really, really like me. (Ha!)
If you don’t believe the internet is watching you, try turning 64 in secret. It won’t work.
Paul McCartney of the Beatles once asked in song: “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”
Well, Paul, judging from the number of offers I’m getting for free steak dinners at Ruth’s Chris — in return for listening to investment company pitches — I’d say the answer to the “feed me” part is “heck, yes.”
Suddenly the water-cooler talk among boomers in the newsroom is about Medicare.
“Did you ever think 20 years ago that we’d be standing around talking about this stuff?” another Boomer editor asked me last week. “Nope,” I answered.
We are all trying to decipher Medicare’s parts. So far, I’ve discerned that Medicare Part A is simple, Part B is more complex and Part D is about to change. I’ve also learned that there are any number of companies that would like to sit me down and explain all this, bless their hearts.
Those of you who have already crossed over — and by crossing over, I mean turned 65 — probably remember the feeling. Being 64 puts you in the cross-hairs for some of America’s most sophisticated marketing machines representing the powerful worlds of health care, personal finance and guttering. (It’s settled science that gutter guards are only sexy to people over 65.)
Turning 65 is also a subtle reminder that you are officially an oldster — or as I like to call it, a “junior senior.” Any 64-year-old who calls himself or herself middleaged gets an F in math. Unless you
are planning to live to 130ish, 65 is not middle age.
Folks, middle age in the U.S., given current lifeexpectancy charts, is about 40. Hate to break it to you, baby boomers, but there are already some middle-age millennials out there.
The best thing I’ve discovered about hitting my mid-60s is that it opens the door to unapologetic eccentricities. Or as New York Times columnist Pamela Paul wrote in a piece last weekend: “You can pretend to have gone entirely batty whenever it suits you.”
It also helps you embrace absurdity.
True story: I went to the WUTC radio studio last week to record a podcast about the Chattanooga Motorcar Festival, which I was covering for the newspaper. When I sat down with the interviewer, he said, “Well, Mark, I see you’re here to talk about the topic ‘How To Buy a Dance.’” Excuse me?
I was dumbstruck. In most cases I can fake a conversation, but for this prompt — “how to buy a dance” — I had nothing. I literally felt my jaw stick open in the “say ah” position.
Turns out, the mix-up was due to an texting “autocorrect” mistake that translated “writing an advance story” to “how to buy a dance” story. So we regrouped and talked about cars.
Rather than be put out, I thought the whole incident was so absurd as to be hilarious. Kind of like the time, as a young reporter, that I barged into a funeral home looking for a “cornbread and bean supper” for a city commission candidate.
If getting older means laughing at yourself more, bring it on.
Old age, as they say, is not for sissies. I get that.
But it is for gigglers, as long as we can surrender to the absurdity of absent minds, loose flesh and missing teeth.
So, you go, boomer. Order that free sirloin and gum that meat to death.