55 and Still Alive!

I turned 55 last week and while the number itself seems significant, I soon realized that it does not carry the same weight as other benchmark birthdays.  The obvious blessing for me was best described by the mantra my wife came up with to mark my 5^th year as a cancer survivor, "55 and still alive!"  We had several toasts to that sentiment.  

Out of curiosity I Googled what it means to turn 55 and came across these fun facts.  Did you know that at this age we gain the following “perks?”

Dining Discounts

Entertainment Discounts

Grocery and Other Retail Discounts

            Discounts on Airlines

Continuing Education Discounts

 

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I was a bit underwhelmed by the above.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate saving a few pennies here and there but, really, that’s it?  The one common theme in all these perks is that I have to spend money in order to get a discount.  This is not to discount the fact that the need to save money grows proportionally with the candles on the birthday cake, but the list seems to discount the actual needs of us seniors.  Here is the list I was hoping to see:

Discounts on all alcoholic beverages (Let’s be honest, a martini works better than BENGAY for soothing whatever aches.)

A specially designed airline just for seniors that offers reduced rates to see children and grandchildren on flights that have no screaming children on them.

The removal of state income tax for those of us who don’t move to Florida.  If living in Florida already, a small stipend for remaining there rather than moving somewhere not so hot in the summer.

Dropping the expectation for tips while dining out.  (Someone in his or her 20s serving someone who has survived into their 50s should be asking for advice, not tips)

Separate cinemas for those of us who need the sound effects turned down and the dialogue turned up.  

Free subscriptions to any magazine or internet service that has as its primary purpose the selling of products to the very people they freak out with warnings about growing older.

The right to vote more than once in order to offset the impact of missing the gray vote due to those of us who get lost on the way to the polling center.

I think you’ll agree this is both a reasonable and justifiable list worthy of celebrating. 

Super Hero?

One of the benefits of getting older is that one no longer feels the same need to have heroes in life.  While it’s not a universal phenomenon,  the move away from needing someone to look up to often falls away like so many strands of hair, leaving behind the bald truth that anytime we look up to someone else we have belittled ourselves in some way.  This also helps protect us from the inevitable disappointment when our idols eventually fall from grace.

It makes sense that when we are younger we quiet literally look up to others who are bigger, smarter, stronger, and capable of great feats of courage or physical displays.  It helps to make the world a little less scary.  As we grow older, however, hero worship takes on the star-struck quality of desperately needing to believe that there are those who rise above us mere mortals either in deed or virtue.  The need here is not as easy to pin down; my best guess is that it helps to restore our faith in humanity.  It appears that one good hero can counter the effects of hordes of miscreants, malcontents, and good old fashioned mean people.

There are some who also hold the cynical belief that our culture likes to put certain people on pedestals simply to either knock them down or delight when the natural force of gravity takes over and sends them crashing back to the ground.  Thus, the rise and fall of our heroes takes on the predictable rhythm of waves breaking on the shore, with each new idol exposing him or herself as suffering from the illness that effects all of us; that of being human.

If we allow the aging process to truly make us wise, to learn from our experiences rather than just repeat them, there comes a time when the need for heroes is abandoned.  This comes, not in the form of resignation that “There are no heroes, so why bother,” but a realization that the real heroes are those who live their lives to the best of their abilities, whose traits are not super-human, but extraordinarily humane.  

As idol worship falls away so does schadenfreude, that strange delight in watching others stumble over themselves.  Minus the need to place people on precarious perches of “better than me,” we no longer suffer the heart-ache when they turn out to be just like the rest of us whose lives swing between comedy and tragedy.  

Ultimately, the answer to the question, “When will our heroes stop disappointing us?” is, “When we stop needing heroes.”

Instagrampa

One of the sure signs that I’m getting older is the growing disconnect between me and technology.  While many grayers are as tech savvy as anyone, most, like me, find that our grandchildren are more adept at surfing the wild web than we ever were, or ever hoped to be.  At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, there is something disconcerting about the growing trend of the use of cutting edge technology to put unflattering pictures of our faces into cyberspace, even if that face is in front of, or next to, something most people would consider interesting.  

Full disclosure; my wife and I have few joys greater than getting on FaceTime with our granddaughter.  To live in an age where loved ones can virtually be with us despite the miles is truly a blessing.  The ability to be face-to-face aside, the selfie craze is making me long for the days when in order to see loved ones we needed to travel by horseback.  (OK, I’m not nearly that old but I can imagine that after a bumpy ride via wagon train, and staring at the working end of a horse, anyone’s face would be a welcome site.)

I’ve noticed that I’m developing a condition that I call Intermittent Preinstagram Anxiety Disorder, iPAD for short, which is characterized by the occasional worry that the people staring back at me in Instagram can actually sense how quickly I’m losing interest in seeing what they look like a day after they posted their last self-portrait.  I’ve actually found myself touching the Instagram icon with a trembling finger and the physiological reaction one has just before being splashed with cold water. 

While a simple cure for iPAD would be to simply remove the app, I find this hard to do for two reasons.  The first is that I’m afraid that certain people I follow will take it as a personal slight; that somehow I’ve lost interest in seeing the myriad of facial expressions they are capable of making.  Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I fear that I’ve reached that senior moment turning point best summed up by the phrase, “I just don’t understand kids today.”  Keeping the app is my e-version of the comb-over; the attempt to be seen as still being “with it” “hip” or whatever word the kids are using these days to mean “Not an old grampa.”

Alas, it is most likely too late, and I will have to face the fact that faces are in and being grumpy about the selfie craze is definitely out.