My Brain is getting AARPed

When I got that first AARP magazine (it's eerie--I can't remember my own birthday sometimes, but AARP knows when it is!), I threw it away and refused to join an organization of old people. I gave in about five years later, when I started feeling like AARP material. Disturbingly enough, I actually enjoy the magazine.

I didn't realize that reading about my fellow AARPians, who actually spend years planning their beautiful retirements, would put my brain on the AARP track. I now think about walk-in bathtubs, MediCare, and my hope that I'll be able to drive until I die (preferably not while engaging in said activity.) These things had never occurred to me before. Thanks, AARP.

I drive low-maintenance-high-gas-mileage Japanese car, and have for years (many of those years in this same car!) I used to think that one day I might have a Mercedes, but to my dismay, even my dreams are changing. I used to look at Mercedes drivers with a tinge of envy, but now that I have the AARP mindset, I look at them with a tinge of pity.

"You poor people," I think, "Did you even think about your retirement when you decided to spend all that extra money for a status car? You could be driving a low-maintenance-high-gas-mileage Japanese car and putting the difference away for the future!" Only recently has it begun to dawn on me that maybe the the future they saved and planned for included a Mercedes. If you do it the AARP way, it seems, such a thing is possible.

Rats! If only I'd started reading the magazine five years sooner!