AARP HARASSMENT IN THE HOME PLACE

I am 48 years old. I have less gray hair then most of my friends, my age and younger. I don't yet need glasses, and still look pretty damn good without Botox. My youngest son only just reached the double digits in December, and I still have a mean right-arm. In fact, on a glorious Sunday afternoon in the fall, while playing baseball with the kids, I took a heroic tumble in Riverside Park when I tripped over a protruding root from a nearby oak tree. Tossed and rolling across the bumpy ground like MacGyver narrowly escaping an explosion, I skinned my shin raw, prematurely hobbling home, stopping at Duane Reade for a new supply of peroxide, gauze and Bacitracin.

My cholesterol is under control (without medication), and I can still do round-offs on the beach. So what the hell, then, is AARP doing clogging my mailbox and jamming my paper shredder? What the hell?

In an age where 70 is the new 50, 50 the new 30, 40 the new 20 (OK, maybe that's pushing it), I find it outrageous - and a little presumptuous - that the work force has begun to consider me old hat, a used up, unproductive member of society. Why, I've only in the last few years begun a second career, in real estate, and I'm pretty darn busy. I don't play golf or lunch with the ladies, so there is no way for me to benefit from any benefits. Not yet, anyway.

There could not possibly be anything wrong with me, or anyone else my age, that should warrant any 'retired persons' organization bombarding my mailbox with weekly 'association' literature. Everyone forgets their keys, misplaces their Metrocard, loses their favorite lipstick, confuses words like 'breakfast' and 'dessert,' and so on. A neurologist I once spoke to about this said it's all stress-related, and that my brain is just fine.

So where am I going with this? I don't quite know. But what I do know is that today, when I finally decided to attack that colossal pile of bills, coupons, school papers, Holiday photo cards and other stuff that has been collecting since Thanksgiving, I came across another one of those fucking American Association of Retired Persons envelopes, unopened, with my name on it. I was horrified and infuriated that an entity completely unknown to me has invaded my home and the rest of my youth. How could they get it so wrong? So I picked up the envelope along with a pile of papers to discard, and after pulling a muscle in my back, limped defiantly over to the paper shredder and showed those friggin' whippersnappers at AARP a thing or two. Bastards.