A  puz­zling and amus­ing aspect of get­ting “old”, is that there’s  appar­ent­ly an exact point when the “age is just a num­ber” non­sense becomes a mile­stone at which you need stuff you didn’t know you need­ed before then.

The day before I turned 79, the adver­tis­ing on social media I browse changed from the usu­al junk relat­ed to my most recent search his­to­ry,  (which is wor­ry­ing and annoy­ing in and of itself), to items tout­ed as essen­tial for my new age level.
None of them relat­ed to what I per­ceive as my actu­al phys­i­cal, fis­cal or psy­cho­log­i­cal state.
How­ev­er, appar­ent­ly, “Cana­di­an Seniors” (a cat­e­go­ry I accept I fit) are “rush­ing” to install stairlifts.
If we cer­ti­fied baby boomers are capa­ble of  “rush­ing”, why would we need a mechan­i­cal device to haul us up a few steps?
I con­fess that for some time I haven’t exact­ly rushed on the  61 steps between our sum­mer cot­tage and the dock. But I still  man­age them at my own pace, launch a kayak when I get to the bot­tom, pad­dle for a cou­ple of hours and then do the whole thing in reverse, with­out stop­ping to gasp for breath.
Nonethe­less, accord­ing to one adver­tis­er, my birth­day indi­cates that it’s time to make “a long-term invest­ment in safe­ty and inde­pen­dence” — a stairlift.
The same more or less applied to the pro­mo­tion of an in-house elevator.
No def­i­n­i­tion of “long- term” was pro­vid­ed, but I feel safe in assum­ing the huck­ster wasn’t talk­ing decades. Although my moth­er recent­ly turned 99, so if I got lucky in the gene lottery…
As an “Ontario Senior” I can now “try the lat­est hear­ing aids risk free”.
I don’t need one, but it’s a relief know­ing I won’t be in dan­ger if I ever do feel the urge to give one a test run.
In the mean­time, as what I guess is a birth­day present, one retail­er invit­ed me to “Dis­cov­er North America’s #1 sell­ing walk-in tub…”
If I buy anoth­er outfit’s ver­sion before the end of the year, I can save $2,000.

                   ALTERNATIVELY…

If I end up in the hos­pi­tal because I didn’t buy a stair­lift, ele­va­tor or walk-in tub, a ser­vice I’d hereto­fore nev­er heard of informed me it “…pro­vides per­son­al­ized care to ensure your safe and com­fort­able tran­si­tion” because “heal­ing begins at home.”
A retire­ment home in a place I wouldn’t want to be buried in, nev­er mind inhab­it alive, informed me that if I move in before the end of Decem­ber, I can save money.
Appar­ent­ly if I make it through  to New Year’s Day, the price for that and a walk-in tub go up again, which does seem a tad exploitive, to say noth­ing of macabre.
Anoth­er old­ster home offered “mem­o­ry care”.
I’m not sure what that is, but I’ve already got more mem­o­ries than I can use, so los­ing a few — as long as I can be selec­tive — might not be a bad idea, espe­cial­ly if the out­come is a clear conscience.
Fail­ing that (no pun intend­ed), I also got an offer for “peace of mind” with low cost life insur­ance options.
How that’s use­ful when I’m sup­pos­ed­ly on the way out wasn’t spelled out, unless it was in print too fine for an old fart like me to read.
Hav­ing spent more of my life with­out than with it, I could avoid all of the fore­go­ing by sim­ply ignor­ing the internet.
Except— anoth­er  study alleged­ly dis­cov­ered that “old­er adults” who use it “expe­ri­enced approx­i­mate­ly half the risk of demen­tia than non-reg­u­lar users”.
Between that and var­i­ous walk­ing rou­tines — short, long,  slow, increas­ing­ly quick­er, or run-and-walk, any or all on a dai­ly, two or three times a week or mere­ly more or less reg­u­lar basis — keep­ing track of the rec­om­mend­ed vari­a­tions of dai­ly step num­bers and fig­ur­ing out whether a Nordic or a Mediter­ranean diet will keep me health­i­er, I’m increas­ing­ly con­fused about how and when I’m sup­posed to do any­thing that’s actu­al­ly fun, which is one thing I do believe helps one feel younger than the num­ber of birth­days might imply.
The best answer I came across for those conun­drums was: “Some is bet­ter than none, more is bet­ter than some.”
I also read there had recent­ly been “a very care­ful­ly, pre­cise­ly designed study of cross-fad­ing,” a term for get­ting drunk and high at the same time.
That  sounds like a lot more fun than rid­ing a stair­lift or hang­ing out in an old age home.
So how come the study was car­ried out in “a makeshift bar” at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty instead of being a mile­stone offer?
Until the next “tip­ping point” comes  along, I’m going to ignore the pre­sump­tu­ous huck­sters and stick with good books, an evening sin­gle malt and what­ev­er exer­cise makes me hap­py as aging necessities.

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