My Decade of Turning 50

AARP sent me another solicitation on Friday. Hey, AARP, it’s not you, it’s me. Leave me alone…OK, I’ll be honest, I would love the hotel discount and fantasize that I’d be carded each time I try to claim the AARP discount…NY Times has an article today on Eons, the baby boomer site you used to [...]

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Another scary thing about turning 50 years old — now I find out my heart will inevitably and, as the article says, inexplicably strink — something researchers are calling the “age 50 effect.” Note to researchers: You need to be more creative with your names. How about “The Reverse Grinch Effect” — your heart strinks [...]

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I think I was 40 when I was offered my first senior discount, which must have said something about the kind of night I had the day before I stopped in Mickey D’s for some coffee. I was, like, dude, I’m only, like, barely over 30. But this column raises an interesting point — will [...]

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I wonder what it would be like to be turning 50 years old on Halloween? With all the attention to Halloween these days, it could be one fun party. (I was watching a news report tonight on a costume contest at a local “active adult” community, and the couple who won were dressed as sheep, [...]

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I wish I had a camera when as I drove to work this morning — and, yes, I apparently am the last person in America without a cell phone camera. I passed a Baptist Church in Apopka, Florida, whose sign said this: Sunday, Sept. 910:15 a.m.Armageddon I’m hoping they are showing the 1998 asteroid-threat movie [...]

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I’ve come to enjoy Rhea’s blog at The Boomer Chronicles, but she is making me dread my own soon-to-be-scheduled colonoscopy — surely the oddest 50th birthday present, though I did enjoy the moment when she was, uh, prepping for the procedure and a telephone solicitor called. She truly was “in the middle of something.” Anyway, [...]

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It arrived today. AARP found me — as it does almost all of us turning 50. For just $12.50 a year, AARP says it can help me “make the most of life over 50.” Funny thing is that AARP also found me in my year of turning 49 — one of these arrived last year [...]

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While searching for “scary things about turning 50″ — on the Internet, not around the house or in my soul — I came upon a long blog post on “Wifely Steps” about turning 30. Maybe it’s because of the new VH-1 show I mentioned recently called “I Hate my 30s,” I’ve become fascinated with the [...]

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Every so often I get hit with the cold slap of my age in unexpected moments — another Scary Thing About Turning 50. Today at work, as we discussed the teacher-turned-astronaut who will be on next month’s shuttle flight, someone asked where we all were when we heard about the Challenger explosion that killed teacher [...]

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First it was China! Now my ears! I think we need a new category, perhaps “Scary things about turning 50.” Today’s New York Times web site features an article on how we boomers are losing our hearing. (I wrote a version of this in 2000 for WebMD.com.) Perhaps the scariest thing about turning 50? All [...]

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