March 10, 2004
Codger

Ancient. “Over the Hill”. “Long In the Tooth”. “The Downside of Fifty, the Short Side of Life.” Is there a power verb or adjective available to replace the term “senior”?  If you have one rolling around on the tip of your tongue AARP would like to hear from you. 

It seems baby boomers, the folks who invented the “generation gap”, are now staring eyeball to eyeball at age 60. While desperately desiring to be “seniors” back in high school and college that same designation supposedly leaves something to be desired in today’s stage of life.    

As with many of life’s major issues I was totally unaware of the problem.  While “senior” isn’t my personal pick to describe the demographic grouping where I currently reside it’s also true my peer group isn’t all that choked up about my own personal favorite, “Geezer”.  

According to USA Today some people over the age of fifty want to be called “Ageless adults”.  Excuse me.  All that descriptive phrase accomplishes is to activate the gag reflex.  People preferring “Ageless adults” are the same folks who reside on a “cul-de-sac” rather than a dead end street.  And drink pinot gris.  

The USA Today article quoted a 34 year old retirement community services coordinator, how’s that for a job title, saying it was impossible to attract participants to her  “senior aerobics” class so she changed to title to “ageless aerobics” and it was standing room only.   Changing “Seniors Day at Chick-Fil-A” to “Breakfast and Bingo at Chick-Fil-A” resulted, or so she claims, in an overwhelming response. Like we’re supposed to buy the concept that nothing says join the youth movement like a promise of bingo for breakfast. 

Even AARP has gotten into the name change game.  What used to be the American Association for Retired People is now just AARP.  Using the Kentucky Fried Chicken stratagem of making “fried” disappear by using initials only and calling themselves KFC, AARP is now a letters only organization.   

The term “mature” also appears to be hitting the skids.  AARP once had a monthly publication named Modern Maturity.  Now it’s just the AARP magazine. Locally “senior” has bitten the dust big time. Susan Capps fine local publication the Senior Beacon somewhere along the line metamorphed into just Beacon.  It seems the only print media aimed at senior citizens that hasn’t changed its name is the Grand Junction Rotary’s weekly newsletter.  (Obligatory Rotary joke) 

One can appreciate the problem.  If senior is verboten in the title of a publication calling the paper “The Geezer Gazette”, “Codger Chronicle” or “Blue Hair Journal” most likely won’t be considered a gigantic leap forward in the effort to capture the hearts and minds of the “don’t call us seniors” social security set.  Yet whatever the publication is named it still has a picture of gray-haired people doing something wildly exciting, like square dancing or bonsai, on the cover. 

Looking back it’s most difficult to visualize the generation that rocked out to Dylan and the Stones, the same folks who wanted us to “Make Love Not War”, being reduced to fretting over whether or not the term “senior” is age discrimination at its worst.   But then again maybe that’s not all that surprising.  After all what  “boomers” always did do best was take themselves more than a bit to seriously.