Senior Envy

     It's interesting how one's perspective changes.  I just saw a music video parody of Fun's song, "We Are Young."  In it, a bunch of thirty somethings whine that they are not young any more and that they've gotten nowhere in life.   They threaten to commit suicide by age forty if they haven't "made it" (or at least started a blog!).

http://screen.yahoo.com/we-re-not-young-28966610.html?pb_list=23dce613-c500-43f0-9134-70e58b73187a

     Maybe I shared some of their concerns once upon a time, but these days I don't care about my lost youth or missed opportunities.   I don't want to go back to school to become a lawyer.  All I want is my senior discount.  Yes, I have a full blown case of senior envy.  When I turned fifty, I received my favorite birthday gift ever - a membership to the AARP.  I'm trilled to be in that club, but it's going to be a few more years before I can buy a cheaper matinee ticket or flash my Medicare card for a half price bus ride.
     Why am I chomping at the bit to reach this milestone?  Because I think it's about time I got something for everything age has taken away.  I can't eat burritos anymore.  I can't wear a thong.  I've had to give up theme parks because my bones are too brittle to safely enjoy the rides.  Besides that, the bathrooms are too few and far between.  I wish I could look in the mirror and see only tired eyes and laugh lines.  I also see unwanted facial hair.  I need an application of hair coloring at the first sign of white roots.  Even my junk mail has changed.  I'm solicited for burial plots, electric wheelchairs, and hearing aids.
     The folks in the music video shouldn't fret.  In forty years no one will expect anything from them.  Things come full circle.  We go from Similac to Ensure, from Pampers to Depends.  The polite French refer to their senior citizens as persons of the troisieme age or third age.  The tell-it-like-it-is Americans say that oldsters have entered the second childhood.  That being the case, I don't want to be twenty-two again.  I want to be under twelve.  Besides getting a break on admission fees, maybe I'll develop the ability to play hand held video games.