Jim Rosenau
From the desk of:
Gray Privilege, Honorary Chair
Geriatric Entitlement Team/Your Early Retirement Service
Dear Mr. Varon,
Congratulations on your milestone birthday! As an official Senior Citizen at 62, you are now ENTITLED to a range of discounts, most enviably the “America the Beautiful – National Parks & Federal Recreational Lands Senior Pass,” which provides free admission to federal parks and half price federal camping fees. Get out and take advantage of this deal before enfeeblement takes hold!
Think of it, Mr. Varon, driving up to a cabinesque entrance station in your fully-insured, gasoline powered motor vehicle, flashing your four-color waterproof pass at the earnest young rangers who have decades of government service ahead of them before a much-imagined retirement. Being waved through the gates like a VIP. Meanwhile, working families in smaller electric cars with limited range (not to mention their limited vacation time, limited attention spans and SFPC*) must fork over the cost of a medical copay to enter our federally owned lands, which we at GET-YERS are legally required to remind you was taken by force of arms from the Original People of North America.
But finally you don’t have to worry about that any more! Your Golden Years will be time of Don’t Mind If I Do discounts, Let Me Get That Door, and Can I Help You With Those Packages? Try pretending that you don’t know how your key fob works. You’ll be amazed by what a little befuddlement will do for you.
Young people may smugly resent Boomers as a class but they are still eager to help you. Have they caught on to our little secret? Not yet, so keep it under your SPF-resistant hat and don’t let them see the spry side of you. Affect a limp. Mutter, drool, stammer. Whatever it takes. Let’s keep this going as long as we can. After all, one day we won’t be here to enjoy the fruits of late stage capitalism, then they can have their socialist revolution on our lushly watered graves!
*Something Funny Please Charles. This is an abbreviation he and I used when writing to request an idea.