There’s no doubt a sim­ple (and wor­ry­ing) expla­na­tion for how web­sites know I’m aging. What bemus­es me is why the adver­tise­ments they tar­get me with  appear to have been devised by what can only be peo­ple with a life expe­ri­ence that, unlike me, doesn’t pre­cede the dig­i­tal age.

If you think that’s an exag­ger­a­tion, check an advert titled  “55 Spe­cial  Gad­gets for Those Over 55”, fea­tur­ing a pic­ture of a cou­ple who looked like they got lost on the way to an ear­ly Joni Mitchell con­cert as a “grab-the- old-folks’ atten­tion” tactic. 
Item Num­ber one is a stick with which “In a click (or a tap), you can back up every sin­gle pho­to and video on your com­put­er or smart­phone”…up to 60,000 of them… “with­out being tech-savy”
No sale. Being well over 55, my pho­to mem­o­ries are from an age before “tech-savy” was even a word (despite which I know is spelled “savvy”). They’re prints and slides, also known as trans­paren­cies. Does any­one oth­er than my con­tem­po­raries know what those are? They were  made using cam­eras, many of which I still own and being “tech-savy” isn’t a major requirement.
An offer for some kind of mir­a­cle pil­low case asks if I’ve ever won­dered why I “look so rough first thing in the morn­ing?”
Maybe because at my age Nature gets me up at least once a night to stag­ger to the bath­room? Also, nobody shaves me or combs my hair while I’m asleep. The advert would be more appeal­ing if it told me why that hap­pens to peo­ple in movies and TV series who get dressed to go to sleep after they’ve had sex.
I also sus­pect a pil­low that sub­verts falling asleep before sex is in the equa­tion might have a bet­ter chance in the tar­get market.

                          UNSWEET WAYS TO DREAM

Nor do I need some­thing that “essen­tial­ly com­bines yoga, med­i­ta­tion, and behav­ioral ther­a­py” to help me get to sleep.
A more use­ful gad­get would be one that keeps me from falling asleep in front of the TV before a pro­gramme I’m actu­al­ly inter­est­ed in is over.
As for the mir­a­cle anti-snor­ing devices, ask my oth­er half if any of them work.
The 55 gad­gets list is actu­al­ly 87, which I con­clude means the Madi­son Ave munchkins thought a head­line with a num­ber clos­er to their intend­ed audience’s age would scare us off. 
They also missed the less than sub­lim­i­nal mes­sage in the sales pitch: “…the last nail clip­per you’ll need?”…all those oth­er devices, plans, foods and reg­i­mens to keep me liv­ing longer aren’t going to work as advertised.
I won­der if the “inter­net celebri­ty and cen­timil­lion­aire tech founder turned longevi­ty guru Bryan John­son”, who spends $2‑million a year mea­sur­ing every aspect of his body, eats the same three veg­an meals every morn­ing and gulps 111 pills a day has one?
My pre­ferred reg­i­men of reg­u­lar exer­cise, Mediter­ranean diet, decent wine and a pre-pran­di­al sin­gle malt means I won’t get to wear the “Don’t Die” tee shirt his fol­low­ers favour.
It might not help me live as long as the “aging is a treat­able dis­ease” indus­try claims it can do, either. But it’ll feel like I did.
Nor will I be tempt­ed to lav­ish my pen­sion on alleged anti and wrin­kle-remov­ing lotions, potions and creams.
Excuse me, I earned every damned one of my wrin­kles — and my grey hair — through laugh­ing, cry­ing, squint­ing and frown­ing in puz­zle­ment and won­der, quak­ing in fear and on and on…in short…by life. I nei­ther need nor want to remove its mile­posts, thanks all the same.

                                    LIVING BY THE NUMBERS

I used to scoff at the say­ing “age is just a num­ber”, but since my num­ber passed the Bib­li­cal­ly-allot­ted three score and ten, it’s begin­ning to make a kind of sense.
Aging is the num­ber of places I ache when I get out of bed. So far, they’re not always the same, so the num­ber isn’t grow­ing at an alarm­ing rate, which I’ll accept as a gift.
Dimin­ish­ing num­bers count too. The kilos and num­ber of reps in my weight-lift­ing reg­i­men have been declin­ing. The num­ber of sec­onds I can bal­ance on one leg varies, so I’ve decid­ed not to use the count as part of the age calculation.
The num­ber I like best was a com­ment on this web­site by a friend and col­league con­sid­er­ably old­er than me, the great Jon Ran­dal, which deemed me “hence­forth a mem­ber in good stand­ing” of the “ Ancient and Hon­or­able Order of Cur­mud­gens”.
Hap­pi­ly, no fad diets, potions, lotions or denial of life’s minor plea­sures are required.

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