Geezer Girl

“Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now....” Bob Dylan

The days of getting carded at bars and liquor stores are long over, however businesses now ask if I have an AARP membership card. Many of my over-the-hill friends are card carrying, certified geezers with the American Association of Retired People. No matter how many times I move, 3 weeks before each birthday every year since I turned 50, AARP finds me and tries to lure me into official geezerhood with enticing offers of discounts on everything from car insurance to canned tuna. They try to indulge me with shiny plastic membership cards assuring me that we're the largest generation to come of age. They feature youthful looking celebs on the cover of their monthly magazine... entertainers who can afford cosmetic surgery, personal yoga and fitness trainers.

So far, I've held steadfast in my refusal to join into the idea of organized elderchild. Although it gives voice to getting older and despite the discounts, frankly, I'm happily in denial of aging. It's no coincidence that I live in Crested Butte, a town unlike any other, full of youth of every generation and closer to that “second star to the right, straight out till morning” of Never Never Land.

When I complain to friends and family about the Senior Service Solicitors stalking me, they scrunch up their faces in disbelief, “But... I'm an AARP member. You should join. There are so many benefits and 20 % off of everything. Everyone's a member now. In fact, you should write for them.” I feel like I'm the only one the aliens from space missed when they hid the big green pods under the beds of those who woke the next morning and found themselves “one of them.”

Baby boomers – the largest generation ever in solidarity subscribing to the philosophy of, “I don't wanna grow up...” So why join a grown up organization? Aging is somewhat inevitable, but no one has to really grow into the prescribed roles our parents were obligated to fulfill... at the still juvenile age of 25, when most Buttians are juggling to finance next year's ski pass, most of the Boomer generation's parents had careers, kids, a Sears' kit home and shiny gas guzzler in garage. The Cleavers. They looked older. They had become their parents. All that changed in the 60s rebellion when the newly found freedom of finally being on our own evolved into different lifestyle choices and breaking out from the material-oriented war generation. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Move to Crested Butte.

In Florida, where everyone once went to retire into tropical shuffleboard and canasta parties, the senior discounts at IHOP start at 55, which is what the retirement age used to be. People were older then. We're younger than that now.

“Hey, Aunt Dawne, you should go for the senior special, it's cheaper,” chirps my 11-year old nephew. Some things are not worth the admission. I order the regular priced massive plate of pancakes, bacon and hash browns with eggs, ignoring calories and cost. I don't feel old or senior... or like skimping on breakfast because most senior days in my town require hardy starts for hiking, biking and skiing endurance or just existing at 9,000 plus feet altitude.

“Yeah, but you're a geezer anyway,” my daughter taunts and cackles. So what defines a geezer? The eccentric old lady with the over-the-top decorated kicksled who rides around in a tutu, fairie wings and a hair color not found in nature?

Crested Butte should start planning now for the predictable future of its mid-timers – the aging hippie boomers who will need the extraordinary. Extra Mountain Express busses for deep winter trips to the second assisted-living commune in Mexico. The RTA cruise ship, funded by 1% for Open Space, as an alternative to a nursing home. The defunct Town Circulator bus, reinstated as the Senior Shuffle, to get us to all the local poker games. Free senior skiing every day on the mountain. The 4th of July parade will have an entire block of peddling PBR-happy seniors in costumes on tricked out tricycles.

I'm sure that I'll never actually reach retirement age because the government keeps pushing it up. Since my generation believes in reinvention rather than retirement anyway, we'll have to improvise financially – but we already have a lot of practical experience in this by living in Crested Butte all these years.

Birthdays tend to collect on our surface like oil on water, reflecting all the resolutions and delusional determination to not age, despite our years. Another birthday is galloping toward me like an unstoppable race horse, kicking up all the dust of doubt and defiance. No matter how hard or deep I dig my heels in, they keep coming. But as my father used to say, before he succumbed to the inevitable, “Kiddo, it beats the alternative...” in his thick Bronx accent and wisdom.

This week, in honor of my “Beats the Alternative Day,” I bought a new all-purple lacy outfit as part of a KBUT radio pledge... complete with satin gloves, fishnet stockings, dazzling jewels and of course, a short flouncy crinoline tutu... most appropriate for that downward slide on the other side closer to reinvention.

In despair Captain Hook cried out, ”'Tis some fiend fighting me! Who are you, Pan?”
“I'm youth!” cried Peter, “I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg. I'm youth! I'm joy!” He was Peter Pan. He would stay Peter Pan, the boy who would never grow up... from the book Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie.