Sinister moves are afoot. At age 50 we are inundated with boring geriatric jokes. Pathetic, half-baked comedic philosophy floods the internet, ensnaring us into believing that because we can’t spell Messi and the only Swift we know is Jonathan, we’re in early onset dementia. These so-called comics demand we feel like them; ancient, fossilized, incapable, incoherent, decrepit, timid, and resisting any pressure to get off the sofa.
In Australia it begins (like everything Down Under) with tedious real-estate conversations on the ins and outs of the social tragedy called “retirement villages,” those prized luxurious last resorts advertised for the over 55s; the antepenultimate step before the Big One. When the kids have left home, parents depart the cultural void of suburbia to be with other lost souls targeted by property companies endowed with antennae to detect couples with little purpose and lots of money. Getting in is not cheap, staying there ridiculously expensive, and the price of leaving, either voluntarily or horizontally, would make any realty reptile blush, were such an emotional response possible.
In a country where real estate rip-offs are an art form, the retirement village industry takes exploitation and the trick of contractual fine print to unchartered depths. The industry was described by Australia’s ABC Television as a “…national disgrace, with three juicy rackets: deferred fees, ongoing fees that keep going when you die, and bonds.” In other words, a developer’s dream.
Advertising features a slightly greying and deeply tanned couple prancing around on the beach and waving happily from a tennis court to their greyingat-the-temples and wrinkle-free new friends. Nothing about this manicured paradise being so isolated you’d need a plane to go shopping. Halcyon days and no sign of a wheelchair, or grizzled folk in need of care in these Neverland establishments. Everyone is a budding Peter Pan. Meanwhile, a thousand times their number are shuffling around in shabby government care homes where death, or even Singapore, must seem preferable.
No one grows old in these wonderland ghettos. Over 55!? Hell, thousands of people start high altitude climbing and running marathons decades later than that. The oldest man to summit Everest was 80, the oldest woman 73. At 87 Picasso produced 347 engravings; Grandma Moses didn’t pick up a paint brush until she was 76.
Over 55s ads tell us getting old is fun, when in fact it stinks. Which segways [sort of] into anti-ageing creams sold to a mass of humanity desperate to believe in the efficacy of magical goo made with Mongolian mountain goat saliva, organically refined Peruvian herbs and poo of the Niger Delta Colobus monkey. The more exotic (and expensive) the better. Unprincipled purveyors flog this cosmic woo-woo stuff as cosmetics, and cosmetic, by definition, means superficial. Still, the industry worldwide is worth a trillion dollars, making the over 55s ads look sensible.
I don’t know who said, “Had I known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself,” but it was Ogden Nash who remarked, “You are only young once, but you can stay immature forever.” I’ll drink to both.