It was a great day, and
more fun when I visited with friends in the evening. So I’m not really having
to proclaim “Happy Birthday” to myself out of loneliness – I received cards,
calls, texts, e-mails, and numerous messages or timeline postings on Facebook.
I have definitely not been neglected.
I have never tried to
conceal my actual age (well, not once I was twenty-one, anyway.) A friend of
mine says “A woman that will tell her age will tell anything,” as though it’s a bad thing. I’m to the stage when I’m
glad to have made it this far. But having said all that, I was a little put off
when I opened Facebook the day before my birthday and there it was “Carol
Robbins Hull turning 72 tomorrow.” Somehow in cold hard type it seemed, well,
I’m not sure what it seemed. Intrusive, maybe. If I choose to tell you my age,
that is one thing, but for Facebook to blab it to the whole FB universe seemed
a bit heartless. Of course, it probably means only that I didn’t do the
settings right and their computer just spit it out to alert people that my day
was coming up, and I will admit that I loved reading all the posts that people
send me on my day.
I’m not quite through
complaining though. In past years I’ve received birthday cards from my insurance
agent and sometimes the dentist, and that was fine with me, a bit commercial,
but at least I actually have some kind of relationship with them. However I
received one this year that offends me. It says that I have something special
just for me: a hearing test and a gift card to a restaurant when I order my
hearing aids. I guess what my cousin’s husband says is true, that once we get
to a certain age we are presumed to be “deaf, blind, and lame.” I am tired of
being bombarded weekly with ads for those things you ride around on, hearing
aids, and old-folks-friendly phones. I can still hear pretty much all I want to
hear. True, I do have to ask people to repeat things sometimes, but that is
usually because I wasn’t paying attention in the first place. After cataract
surgery my vision is the best it’s been since I was ten years old. And I may
not keep up an athlete’s pace, but I’m still getting around pretty well. Not
running any marathons, actually not running at all, but then I rarely did even
when younger. My mother thought that ladies shouldn’t perspire, much less sweat
(a word she never used) and I’m somewhat in agreement.
There are at least a few
establishments that I refuse to do business with because I really dislike their
ads. Because I am getting older (I refuse to say old) it is possible that I
might someday need a hearing aid, but if one more sales piece thinly disguised
as a good wish arrives, this place will most certainly find itself on that
list. So all you companies that bombard women ‘of a certain age,’ with unwanted
reminders that we are not twenty-one any more, take note. I think I speak for
most of us when I say, “Stop it!” Outwardly we may appear as youthful as we
feel, but don’t count us out yet. We still know our own minds, and we are a
choosy lot.
