I’m Gen X and I Just Got My AARP Card. This Feels Like a Mistake.
My father uttered the same line every year on his birthday: “I don’t feel this old.” He said it through his 60s, 70s, and nearly all the way through his 80s. “This is a mistake. I’m your age.” I’d nod, put a hand on his shoulder and think, Oh, Dad, no you’re not.
In my mind, he never was my age. We know the old were once young, but deep down we don’t fully believe it. Parents, grandparents, teachers, Betty White: born old. Dad, like all dads, has lived in a perpetual condition of oldness, whereas I will stay young until I die, 50 or a thousand years from now. It is the thoughtless way a young person thinks.
And then that young person walks to his mailbox and finds that he has received his AARP registration packet.
AARP is an organization focusing on the needs and interests of Americans over the age of 50, with a secondary responsibility of notifying you by mail that you’re one of those Americans. It used to be called the American Association of Retired Persons, because a person used to be winding up for retirement around the mid-century mark. Membership in AARP has been cultural shorthand for old age, and no matter how many photos they show you of kicky grey-haired ladies holding an iPad in one hand and making a yesssss fist with the other, it is a reminder of one’s mortality. But you also get discounts at hotels and stuff, so I joined.
Being young has been a significant part of my self-image. I’m the youngest in my family, myself a surprise delivery, eight years after my folks thought they were finished having kids. I started working at MTV three full months after I’d aged out of its demographic. I live in Los Angeles, where a man is free to wear checkerboard Vans into his dotage without fear of judgment. Youth is kind of my whole thing, I realized as I flipped through flyers about prescription drug discount programs and Harry & David gift basket offers.
I am not young anymore. I am 50, and there is an AARP card in my wallet to prove it. And my old man was right: I don’t feel it at all.
At 50, I am firmly in the middle of Generation X, a cohort known for its independent thinking, technological savvy, and the flattering stories it tells about itself. Our coming-of-age soundtracks, Nevermind and The Chronic, broke mainstream radio forever. We are the first generation to teach our older siblings how to use a smartphone. We gave the culture The Real World, Lollapalooza and Keanu Reeves. We weren’t supposed to get old. This is a mistake.
Just before Covid hit, I made a new friend, a married guy in his mid-30s. We struck up a conversation in line for a burger pop-up that was generating buzz on Instagram (youthful!) and met for a beer a few times after that (spontaneous!). The last normal thing I did that last normal Sunday in March 2020 was meet him and his friends at a climbing gym (ill-advised!). They’re all the same age, friends since kindergarten who have all wound up in Los Angeles. They skittered up the expert climbs with ease; I struggled through all four steps of the children’s one until I could do it in one go, and then I did not wash my hair for four days, because I could not successfully squeeze the shampoo bottle. Activities moved outside after that, and they’ve been magnanimous about taking me along on the occasional bike ride. I don’t feel the twelve-oh-God-maybe-fifteen-year age difference between us, but as gracious as they are about waiting for me at the top of the hill, the truth is clear: they do.
I don’t feel old. Neither did my dad, until he did, and he was gone pretty quickly after that. But there’s a memory I have of him: he and my mom came to visit me in New York, when I was in my late 20s and they were pushing 70. I’d cooked dinner for them and my roommates in our tiny kitchen, and we had gone through some bottles of wine and progressed to the “bellowing along with the stereo” segment of the evening. I don’t remember what the music was, whether it was Sinatra for them, or Ben Folds Five for us, or what. I do remember my dad getting out of his seat in his crisp navy blazer, walking to the apartment door, and disappearing through it. Oh no, I thought, I’ve embarrassed him. I followed, and I said, “Are we being too loud?” He looked me right in the eyes and said: “No. It’s just the acoustics are better out here.” And we sang, he and I, arm in arm. A couple of kids.
He was right, and not just about the way sound bounces off tile. Aging will be a physical reality soon enough; before then, while it’s a mental choice, you can always opt out of it. God bless him, my dad was younger than me his whole life.
I’m going to keep choosing to be young for the time being. Pretty psyched about the hotel discounts though.
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