Not Too Young For AARP

I turned 50 this year.  Amid the few birthdays cards that I still get at my age was an "invitation" to join AARP¹.

In case you're very young or not from the USA, essentially AARP is the group you join when you reach retirement age, which, nowadays, is when you're too old to work.  Of course, there's very little mention of the words "old" and "elderly," or even "retired" on the AARP About page.  The reason for not mentioning the words "old," "elderly" and "retired" is simple.  They don't want people to wait until they're old and/or retired to join.  Baby boomers are dying off, so in order to increase membership, AARP frankly needs to seek younger members.

Also, they don't want people to freak out when they receive their first invitation to join AARP, as I did.

"Join AARP?!  I'm not Old!" I exclaimed out loud to my wife.

"You're eligible to join when you reach 50," my wife patiently explained to me.

"Grumble," I grumbled.

She's three years younger than me, so I can't wait until she gets her invitation, so I can gleefully say the same thing back to her.

My wife has been borrowing back issues of the AARP Magazine from the library.  I'm perplexed about why she would find the publication interesting, unless it's to see who's on the cover.  Of course, you don't need to borrow the entire magazine to see who's on the cover.  You can just walk by the magazine rack and glance at it.  But then once you see who's on the cover, you might want to read about why they're on the cover.  Recent issues that graced our coffee table featured such hotties as Gloria Estefan, Sharon Stone, and my all-time favorite-to-die-for Valerie Bertinelli.

Those women aren't necessarily hotties today, but they certainly were hotties way back when I divided the world population into "Women Who Are Hot" and "Everyone Else."  So to see them on a magazine for old folks is shocking, which is probably why they're on the cover.  I expect any day to see Miley Cyrus featured very soon.

---

¹ The acronym once stood for "American Association of Retired Persons," but they don't seem to refer to it any more.