The Early Bird Pact

More important than “to love and cherish” or “in sickness and health” is the vow we made to each other many years ago – no early bird dinners. I’m not sure how it all began, but it may have had something to do with watching some seniors shuffle into the local Horn and Horn Smorgasbord Cafeteria at 4 o’clock in order to get the cheaper Early Bird dinner. One of us looked at the other and we vowed at that moment, to never, ever go to one of those things.

It’s a lot like the “shoot me if I get like that” promise that spouses extract from each other. There’s something about a herd of seniors being corralled into a cafeteria to eat at 4 pm (whether they’re hungry or not) that’s very unsettling. The restaurant views them as a captive audience that can be manipulated easily by the promise of a discount because they’re living on fixed incomes. Maybe that’s why there are so few guys wearing ascots or women wearing diamonds at an early bird dinner.

Does eating dinner at 4 pm mean you’re in bed under the covers by 8? Why does being older mean you have to miss all the fun? We want to eat at 8 pm and stay out until 10 or 11. Where’s the fun in sitting at home watching reruns? I would rather eat less and pay less than be rounded up like docile cattle for the chow line because the restaurant wants to fill some seats and get me out before the high rollers show up (if there are any high rollers going to cafeterias).

Even the elder hostels give me pause. Sure, the programs are great and they take the guesswork out of the planning, but there’s that herding thing going on again. Like lemmings following the lady with the red umbrella at the museum. I’m too much the nonconformist to go there.

I’ll take the discount for seniors at the movie theatre, museums, for bus/train fare, and at the supermarket. That’s only fair. We paid our dues by paying full price all these years. And it’s okay if a younger person allows me to go ahead of them (age before beauty is a reasonable accommodation). But, we have promised ourselves that there are no Early Bird dinners in our future, and it’s a promise we intend to keep.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

We Got Game Still

I can’t be the only boomer who is taking a belated interest in video games. It seems like we still got game after all. But it’s not the appeal of the more violent games such as Grand Theft Auto that has caught our attention.

In my own case, I just want to see what I’ve missed. If it’s only gaming where you shoot at people and things, we have enough of that in real life. It appears that boomers are looking for something more constructive or rewarding, and strategy games such as Civilization and the Sims may be just the ticket. I mean what self-respecting baby boomer doesn’t thing she/he can build an empire from scratch or create a better community? We’re the can-do generation, right? The other avenue for boomers would be games like Nintendogs or Brain Age which help you exercise your noodle. I guess the attraction here is that if you engage with video games you can keep using your brain and keep Alzheimer’s at bay.

If you want some physical exercise to stay fit, the whole Nintendo Wii phenom may be just right. Some retirement communities and cruise ships are installing the consoles just to get residents up on their feet and moving again. It’s not just the movement that helps, but the thinking that goes into the activity as well. Bowling without the heavy real ball cuts down on body aches and pains, but it still is a decent form of exercise for someone who is doing no other form of exercise.

The big game publisher Electronic Arts runs a web site called Pogo where boomers can play simpler games such as Poppit, Word Whomp and Bingo Luau that are amusing entertainment if you want to kill some time, but they do promote mouse dexterity and some level of brain activity. Hey – it’s another way to get through the day, okay? And what’s so wrong if the place turns into MySpace for seniors?

Bookworm from PopCap games is another video game popular with older players. Similar to Scrabble (which also can be played online), Bookworm has you building words for points with letter tiles.

In the final analysis, we are becoming just another demographic for the game makers to hook on “game crack” but I guess that’s better than the only option being to shoot up gangbangers, and it’s certainly going to be more beneficial for our brains.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Whatever Happened to Driving Nowhere?

When we were really desperate to drive somewhere, anywhere, we would pry out the back seat of the Mercury to look for loose change. In the bowels of the strange brown matting beneath the seat we would find nickels, dimes, pennies, and every now and then, a precious quarter. It may not sound like much now, but gas was 22 cents a gallon in those days, so 50 cents bought us some quality time on the back roads of New England.

We could take the old MG out by the reservoir and watch the beams of light from the headlights bounce off the rows and rows of pine trees that made up the watershed. After midnight, with the top down, all we could hear was the roar of the wind and the purr of the motor. Long straight roads were our late night entertainment as we pushed the MG to see just how fast it could go. The speedometer hit sixty, seventy, eighty, and sometimes ninety before the lights of an oncoming car would force us to click off the high-beams and ease off the accelerator.

Other teenagers parked at “the plaza” and went from car to car, making up lies about who was having sex and who wasn’t, which “good girls” really weren’t good girls, and countless other topics of absolutely no importance that whiled away their time. We, on the other hand, had to be on the move. The whole point of having a car was to be in it, to be one with it, and to always, always keep moving. Could we make it to the border of the next state and back on less than half a tank of gas? It’s not as hard as it sounds in a region of small states, but it was about the adventure. We tested our driving skill and teenage luck.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see how invulnerable we thought we were. It never occurred to us that you might lose control of an Oldsmobile Starfire doing 110 m.p.h. out on the interstate. All we knew back then was that our instincts were telling us to get out on the highway and drive.

Whatever happened to driving nowhere? Four dollar per gallon gas would be one answer, but maybe computers and video games provide a vicarious (and safer) sense of escapism. Besides, cars have become so complex that we no longer understand how they operate, and where’s the romance of that?

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Tel-Spell Madness

Are you as sick of phone numbers that spell things as I am?

I’m talking about 1-800-MY APPLE, 1-800-CALL ATT, 1-800-THE CARD, 1-800-COLLECT, 1-800-CONTACTS, 1-800-GO FEDEX, 1-800-FLOWERS, 1-800-MATTRESS, 1-800-METLIFE, 1-800-PICK-UPS, and 1-800-WESTERN.

What about 1-800-HAIRLOSS? 1-800-CANTPEE? 800-SEESRED? 800-GEEZERS?

Call 1-800-U-R-IDIOT because you have to spend extra time looking at the phone buttons in order to dial the number.

If you’re old enough, you remember when there were place names in front of the numbers, such as MUrray Hill 5-9975 (the number for the Ricardos on I Love Lucy). Likewise, PEnnsylvania 6-5000 and BEechwood 4-5789 made popular in songs, or BUtterfield, LUdlow and hundreds of others. As more and more people got phones, there were not enough numbers to go around, and that’s when AT&T went to all number calling.

Now we’ve come full circle and advertisers hit us with letters that spell out what they want us to do or what they want us to buy. You can even go to DialABC to find out if your number spells out anything, or to convert words to numbers.

At least some advertisers put the all number translation in parenthesis after the letters so you don’t have to waste time doing it yourself. This is also useful to foreign callers who are frequently baffled by a series of letters that means absolutely nothing to them when their phones have only numbers printed on the dial buttons.

I’m putting my money on voice dialing. Every phone will have it some day soon and then none of us will need to look at numbers or letters. If we see a number on our computer or TV screens, you’ll probably be able to click it with your mouse or laser pointer and it will dial up the call for you. It won’t be long before we forget our own phone numbers (that’s already happening to lots of cell phone users).

Maybe phone letters will have a useful function after all. They might play a role in helping us remember our own numbers. Telephomnemonics is the term coined for using letters to remember phone numbers. Now you just have to ask the phone company for 800-IFORGET (800-436-7438).

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

They’re All A-Twitter

If you haven’t come across it yet, there’s a new internet social networking tool known as Twitter. Their slogan is “What are you doing?” And my rejoinder is “It’s none of your business.”

Suddenly the “whole world’s a-twitter” is what it says on their website, but maybe the world is just full of twits who need to tell you everything they are doing. "I am taking a bath now. I have a bad case of diarrhea. We were going to have sex but Hank can’t maintain an erection. Julie and I were going to have dinner out but she says she’s all gassy."

You are limited to 140 characters in your message so you can’t get all literary with it. Would William Faulkner or Truman Capote be Twitter fans if they were still alive? Maybe Capote, but Faulkner? Never.

Twitter calls it being hyper-connected, but it seems to me that it’s another case of TMI – too much information. The funniest claim they make is “Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.” The only control you have is to shut the damn thing off so that you don’t have to witness the constant stream of useless information being beamed at you every time you log on to your computer. It’s not an antidote to overload, it is the overload!

One of their endorsements reads as follows: "If you aren't familiar with Twitter, it is one of those things, like MySpace, that sounds totally ridiculous and stupid when you first hear about it. But once you start using it, you realize how much fun it is." That constitutes an endorsement? It’s fun to know exactly what your friends are up to every minute of the day? You can be sure their constant stream of "tweets" will hold you spellbound.

The big knock on baby boomers has always been how self-centered we are, but I would have to say that anyone who needs to tell everyone else what they are doing all day, every day, has a lot more ego issues than boomers ever had.

I get that Twitter wasn’t targeted to boomers, but that doesn’t calm my fears that twenty-somethings are spending their days all a-twitter. I want them out there working hard to pay for my social security, not twittering away their days. You think America is going to continue to be the world leader in worker productivity with gimmicks like Twitter nibbling away at our best workers? I don’t think so.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

That’s right – we want a little respect here. There are over 100 million consumers in the United States who are 50+ years old. But look at the ads on TV (forget Depends) and you would think only 20-somethings have any money to spend.

The reality is that those 100 million consumers have about $8 trillion in assets and 70 percent of the disposable dollars in the U.S.

So what’s the problem? I used to think that the conventional wisdom among advertising execs was that you want to focus on the 18-24 demographic to win their hearts and minds at an early age and maintain their loyalty over the long haul. However, the latest research is demonstrating that the 18 to 49 demo is no more willing to demonstrate brand loyalty than the over 50 demo.

It doesn’t help that most advertising creatives are in their 30s and 40s – it gives them a great sense of how to sell to their peers, but for the over 50 crowd – not so much. Some ad agencies are beginning to lessen their reliance on demographics and put more stock in psychographics – the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. That’s okay with me as long as they don’t pigeon hole us as being only in the market for denture products and funeral homes.

Sometimes, products that are meant for a younger demo take a strange twist. The classic case for this is the Honda Element. The initial spin for this boxy looking vehicle was that it was a “dorm on wheels,” so they clearly thought it was going to appeal to 20-somethings. When sales exceeded expectations, they analyzed their sales data and discovered that the average buyer was over 44 years old. Boomers were buying them to haul the dogs and carry their gear to second homes. Amazingly, this discovery led to an analysis on their part as to “what did we do wrong.”

Boomers need cars, homes, vacations, gadgets, flatscreen TVs, running shoes, gourmet foods, wine, drugs, and hundreds of other consumer goods, and we have the money to pay for it. And since we are going to live longer, we are going to keep paying for these consumer goods for a lot longer.

So I’m not going to tell you advertising people again – we want some respect. When do we want it? We want it now!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Leftover Hippies

Saw the term “leftover hippies” used in a news item about communities where boomers are retiring, and it made me wonder how they meant that to be taken. Was it someone who wore bellbottoms and smoked dope in the 60s but now that they don’t dress that way (or smoke anything illegal) they still like to think their ideals haven’t changed? Or was it someone’s lament that they are the last of the leftover hippies – an example of a vanishing breed?

It was spoken by a ready-to-retire baby boomer referring to herself, so I’m going to guess that she is someone who believes in the same ideals that hippies represented almost 50 years ago.

Leftover hippies and baby boomers are not mutually exclusive, but for some people it seems convenient to keep the culture war going. A certain radio showhost uses the term in a most derogatory manner, but is that any way to talk about people who just wanted to “give peace a chance.” Is that so wrong, as Harvey Fierstein would say. Hippies were supposed to defy the establishment, but once you’ve co-opted that establishment, you become part of it. Then what?

Can you tell just by looking if someone is a leftover hippie? For women, would it be longhair parted in the middle and going braless? For men, is it the pony tail in the back, all bald on top?

From music and politics to fashion and art, hippies had an extraordinary impact on our culture. If you need your memory jogged, how about The Summer of Love. Woodstock. The Grateful Dead. Tie-Dye. Psychedelics. Teach-ins. The Whole Earth Catalog. Communes. Ben & Jerry’s. Okay -- even Renaissance Festivals!
Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.