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I'll Keep My Aging to Myself, Thank You

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By MARC FISHER

The Washington Post

Published: September 12, 2008

WASHINGTON - Strolling down Disease Alley at the AARP Expo at the Washington Convention Center, I feel ever more justified in my decision to keep ignoring the dozens of membership cards the nation's most persistent advocacy group started sending me more than a year ago.

Eager salespeople approach me with offers to measure my bone density, check my blood pressure, find out if my hearing, vision, balance or memory have begun to tank. You name the malady and a government agency, a charitable foundation and a slew of profiteers have set up booths here to hawk information, fear, advice and giveaways.

Whoever mapped out the exhibit hall at the AARP meeting earlier this month had a fine time collecting many of the disease booths in one cluster, including a row that leads from heart and lung to muscle deterioration, to the across-the-aisle rivals promoting alternative medicines and warning against dietary supplements, and on to epilepsy, deafness and, finally, John Reed and Celi Clark, who at least have the smarts to offer free Snickers bars.

People don't so much stop and chat with Reed and Clark as sort of wander by, pause and scurry on. The cheerful duo represent the National Funeral Directors Association, and they have no illusions about ever being quite as popular a stop as, say, the Wii demonstration or the free massage area.

Diseases and pharmaceutical companies and the aches and pains industry - I never dreamed there could be so many products aimed at making your feet feel better - are all an integral part of an AARP show, but some very clever marketing folks have spent a long time figuring out how to make a buck off the country's big bulge of aging boomers. They have managed to convince many people in their 50s that it's OK to think about being old, OK to take those first steps into the world of wheelchair lifts, grab bars, advance directives and, oh my, colonoscopy prep that comes in a pill instead of a massive gallon jug of vile liquid.

So yes, this is a hall where you really find accordion salesmen and "foot elevators" (they sure look like pillows to me), but it's also where Magic Johnson (like me, he's within a year of hitting 50) and Gene "If it's too loud, you're too old" Simmons and Richard Petty now come to meet their people. To lure the 50-plus crowd, AARP's convention featured performances by Chicago, Paul Simon, Chaka Khan and Regis Philbin. There's Petty over there, signing his photos! And here's KISS's Simmons, 59, who knows where his audience lives now.

"It's surreal to see Regis Philbin on the same bill with Gene Simmons," says Tessa Pollack, 61, who came from San Antonio because going to her first AARP event last year, "as a gag to myself," turned out to be a blast. She says this after trying her feet on Dance Dance Revolution, the ubiquitous boardwalk arcade game on which most teenagers I know can dance like lab rats in an amphetamines experiment. All around me, people scurry off to hear Shirley MacLaine talk about aging. Yes, "spry" is the word. But so is "self." The vast convention hall is a state fair of self-care and self-absorption.

I appreciate the free massage and the air guitar booth and the face creams, but I still don't want that card.

Marc Fisher is a columnist for The Washington Post.

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