Dear AARP,
Before you go to all the trouble of sending me a membership card and a packet with old folks information, please, don't bother. I don’t need it, I don’t want it, you can have it back. I am not retired, I am not old, I am not interested.
And where do you get the nerve to send a letter to my house telling me that I now qualify for your geezer fest and that if I mail in my $16 dues you’ll send me Polygrip coupons? First off, I don’t even qualify for your blue-hair bunch. To join AARP, you need to be 50, and I am not 50. I’m nowhere near 50. Even when I turn 50, I will not be retired. I won’t be close to retired. I’m on the backend of the Baby Boom, that means I get no pension, no Social Security and – after Obama is done with us – no money left in my 401k. I'm looking at another 30 years before retirement.So write back then. Better yet, bring the card by yourself. That will make it easier for me to punch you in the nose. I’m not interested in your Viagra discounts or your expandable-waistband pants or your hearing-aid clinics. I don’t need to know about the price of condos at Boca Raton or Sun City, I’m not interested in magazine articles about Benny Goodman and I am not going to call my congressman and beg him to pass whatever free-pills-for-grama scheme you’ve got going.
No thank you. Not now or ever.If somebody wants to join the AARP, they can hire a 13-year-old to look it up for them on the Internet. People who work in nursing homes could be specially trained to sign folks up for AARP. Coupons could be put in boxes of adult diapers. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disrespect old people, I just don’t happen to be one of them. I have old-people friends. But they all lie about not being old, too. There’s no shame in being old, but there’s no great glory in it either.
Let me set the record straight. Yes, I have been feeling aches in places I've not felt before, I no longer run from one place to the next, and my clothes are starting to show that "middle-aged" look, but I am not old. I’m barely mature.Being congratulated for becoming eligible for the AARP is like being told you’re the prettiest girl at Weight Watchers, or like being valedictorian of your drug rehab class. It’s like getting your GED in prison. It’s like being congratulated for getting old. In fact, that’s exactly what it is.
And, call me crazy, but I don’t need junk mail to remind me that I’m closer to the grave than I am to the cradle. My perpetual-youth bit is unraveling and the last thing I want is the mailman to make incontinence jokes when he hands me the mail.Sure signs of age are, first the AARP envelope arrives in the mail, then comes the black balloons and all your moron friends making old-fogy jokes. After that you get no more promotions at work, they put a 25-year-old in as your boss, the music sucks and everybody starts mumbling. In the end, you look like Walter Matthau and smell like Ben-Gay. You find yourself clipping recipes out of the AARP magazine, and save for vacations to Pennsylvania Dutch country, and wonder whatever happened to Shelley Winters.
To which I respond: No thanks. I’m not hard of hearing, I’m ignoring you.I’m not old, I just have an unusual familiarity with the music of the 1970s, I remember the moon shot, and in the right light Nancy Pelosi is not a bad-looking woman.
I’ve got a moon shot for the AARP. A wrinkly old saggy-baggy moon shot, but a moon shot none the less.I'd prefer if the AARP would kindly take me off their mailing list. I'm not interested.
Because I’m not old.
