I don’t place much stock in conspiracy theories. Conjectures that the Green Berets killed Martin Luther King, Jr., that Jesus and his disciples plotted his own death and “resurrection,” that the United Nations is the instrument of the Devil, or that the government is trying to poison us seem better suited for novels like The Turner Diaries or The Stepford Wives. I have a hard time buying into them.

That is, with one exception.

There is one conspiracy that is so pervasive, so insidious, so unreported, that I can’t believe no journalist has investigated it. It’s a conspiracy worse than anything right wing Republicans or liberal Democrats could ever could ever dream up. It impairs everyone in the world and has been doing so for millennia. It preys on our worst fear. Today this conspiracy sustains a multi-billion dollar industry. It’s victims are found in every strata of society and for the most part they are clueless to what is happening to them.

Yes, it’s the great YOU ARE GETTING OLD conspiracy! From the first birthday card you receive that says “Another year older?—heh, heh, heh!” until they slam the lid on your coffin, you are in the clutches of its omnipresent power. It has no shame and knows no limits. Its charge is to make you to feel old, look old, act old and buy old at every stage of your life.

The evil-doers began to work on you from the moment you were born—although you did not likely become aware of it until you were thirteen years old. That’s when you received a cryptic message from your parents implying you were no longer a child and that you must start to act like a grown-up. At age sixteen you may have begun to suspect that something is not quite right in the world. By age eighteen you knew for sure something was wrong but you were still too young to care. By the time you reached twenty-one, if you hadn’t fiercely resisted, it was too late. Your mind was now tightly under the control of the Larger Influence. Your spirit started to grow old, my friend, and you put a toe—if not a whole foot—in the grave.

Like all conspiracies, the You Are Getting Old plot is cloaked in secrecy and mystery. Its mission is often disguised as good advice and well-intended information.

But you can fight back. The conspirators have a covert set of rules they follow—and their mission is to indoctrinate you into blindly following these rules as well. When you follow them you start to feel old—and feeling old is the first step on the path towards getting old. But I have discovered the Ark of their Covenant. I have untied their Gordian Knot. And now I am going to share their dirty secrets with you.
Here are the Ten Commandments of Aging. I have included examples of how each of them works, but you can probably come up with others as well.

First Commandment: Talk Constantly about Your Health.

When greeting a friend you haven’t seen for a few days, don’t ask, “How are you doing?” Instead, ask, “How are you feeling?” “How are you doing?” almost always elicits a positive answer along the lines of, “Hey great, good to see you!” This is not what you want to hear. You want a response more like, “Well, my back is sort of bothering me today.” That way you can be quick on the uptake with, “Tell me about it. My feet are absolutely killing me.” The point is to make the conversation all about you and your aches and pains as quickly as possible.

There are many other times during the day when you can complain about your health besides just that casual encounter with a friend. Mealtimes are great for this. Take lunch, for example. This is the perfect opportunity to tell your colleagues about your diet, your cholesterol, your food allergies and your body fat index. Start by ordering something from the heart-healthy or weight-watcher column. This will usually elicit an “Oh, are you on a diet?” observation and you are off and running. At happy hour order one of those lite beers. Does the same trick.

Perhaps the most obvious place to complain about your health is in your doctor’s waiting room. But why limit it to your doctor’s office? Waiting time is wasted time anywhere you encounter it, so don’t try to salvage it by reading the newspaper or a good book. Start a conversation by mentioning to your fellow HMO inmate how everything today is hurry up and wait. He’ll quickly agree that this is very upsetting and stressful. You are now perfectly positioned to turn the conversation into a discussion about how stress contributes to your high blood pressure.

You can talk about your health while eating, while shopping (drugstores are great), while traveling, while partying, while working out at the gym, while making love—just use your imagination. The opportunities are almost limitless. The point is, never miss an opportunity to talk about your health if you want to make sure people think of you in an older light.

Second Commandment: Follow the Obituaries.

Not everyone dies old, of course. But it’s a pretty good bet that the older you get the closer you come to dying. Therefore, while dying is not always associated with old age, old age is directly linked to dying. So to get yourself into an old age frame of mind just think about dying. The sooner in life you begin this the better. Why wait until you are middle-aged to start thinking about the Grim Reaper?

One sure way to get yourself into an dying frame of mind is to follow the stories of those who have gone before you to the Great Beyond. You can do this by reading biographies or by watching movies and plays about people of the past. Unfortunately, that doesn’t put you close to the action. Unless you’re a funeral director or a hearse driver, you need something that will remind you on a daily basis that you too are going to kick the bucket. That’s where the obituaries come in.

The great thing about obituaries is that so many people die everyday. There’s never any shortage of vicarious dying experiences. If you’re not doing it already, start reading the obituaries on a regular basis. They will spur you to ponder the many possible ways you can die while at the same time giving you ideas about how to dispose of your tired old body afterwards.

Third Commandment: Early to Bed, Early to Rise.

Benjamin Franklin said it would make you healthy, wealthy and wise. What he didn’t say is that it will also mark you as old. And as we all know, Franklin was dying proof of his own adage. Who remembers ever seeing a picture of a young Benjamin Franklin?

A lot of older people go to bed early and get up early. Young people, on the other hand, go to bed late and get up late. They know that “the night is young” and that the fun doesn’t even begin to start until 11PM.

The problem is, the older you get the less sleep you need. So why would shifting your sleeping hours from, say, 11PM - 7AM back to 9PM - 5AM make you any healthier, wealthier or wiser? You’re still getting eight hours of sleep. No wonder you need a nap in the afternoons. You’re getting too much sleep.

So continue to sleep eight hours a day, making sure that you do it earlier and earlier. That way you can avoid going out and having fun at night and you’ll be able to wake up in time to enjoy the garbage trucks picking up your trash.

Fourth Commandment: Let Your Body Go to Seed.

Let’s face it. Over time, gravity has its effect on the body. Everything eventually starts to sag. Joints begin to ache from the constant pull of the earth. You may even start to stoop or slope in one direction when you walk. But there’s no reason why you should have to wait until you hit middle age before you can start enjoying these classic hallmarks of the mature person.

The first gray hair or wrinkle is your clue that the process has begun. Take a moment in front of the mirror and celebrate the fact that you have now arrived at that never-neverland where you are neither young nor old. Better now to move on quickly to old than to remain in limbo. You can do this by totally ignoring what your body is telling you.

If you’ve led a sedentary life don’t even think about starting an exercise program now. You are already on the right path. Besides, with the job and the kids and other commitments you simply don’t have the time. So don’t worry about it. In no time at all you will have a pot belly and big ass—symbols of your material success in life.

Of course this also means that you must keep eating like you did when you were in school. Now that your metabolism has slowed down you don’t want to delay aging by giving up junk food and weekend beer binges. And if your taste has refined over the years keep shoveling down that pate de foie gras and the tiramisu. You’re on the fast track now and you’ll see results in no time.

A final word for the guys. What ever you do don’t color your hair. In today’s stressful world we all get gray hair much earlier in life than men used to. Is this great or what? Now we can look like stodgy old professors by the time we are forty. But if you must color your hair, make sure you get the kind that looks like its been poured straight out of the shoe polish bottle. That way, those who can see through your disguise will still write you off as old. And by the way, if you have more skin on top than hair be sure to grow those few remaining strands real long. You can drape them around and make nice little swirls on the top of your head—a dead give away to your true age.

Fifth Commandment: Display Your Evidence.

The older you get the more things you accumulate that are constant reminders that you are not as young as you used to be. Take bi-focal glasses, for example. There’s a 99-percent chance that when you hit forty you are going to need some sort of help seeing things up close. What a great opportunity for almost everyone to show the world they are getting older. Don’t even think about disguising your presbyopia with progressive glasses. Get the old fashioned kind with the Hubble lens inserts. Better yet, buy reading glasses so you can look over their rims—and down at everyone.

Your home is your castle. It’s where you display most of your stuff. And what better stuff for a home to have on display to guests (especially young ones) than the paraphernalia of its aging residents? If you take medication be sure to leave your pill jars in a neat row on the kitchen counter. The bathroom is a good place to leave your dentures in a glass of water to frighten the grandchildren. Leave your blood pressure cuff and stethoscope hanging in the family room next to the TV. The footbath and heating pad can usually stay on display in the bedroom. And on the living room coffee table you can make a nice display of your AARP and Arthritis Today magazines.

Sixth Commandment: Use Language that Emphasizes Your Age.

Nothing gives away a person’s status in life like her speech. Remember Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady?Well, not only can people tell where you are from or how much education you have by the way you speak and write, they can also get a pretty good handle on your inner age. That’s why it’s important to avoid youngspeak.

Young people pepper their speech with words of energy and vitality. For example, they “work out,” while their grandparents merely “exercise.” Working out implies pumping iron and breaking a sweat before going out on a hot date. Exercise is something a heart attack patient “takes” when he strolls around the shopping mall. 

Since young people haven’t suffered under the weight of gravity and life’s slings and arrows as you have, they seldom have “problems.” They have “issues.” In fact, they so don’t have problems that “you’re welcome” has become “no problem.” Get it? If you are a parent, grandparent or teacher I’m sure you can come up with other youthful terms to avoid. After all, you don’t want to be considered “sweet.” That would be “way weird.”

You can also call attention to your age by speaking of your years of experience in your profession. Since no one cares about anything you did more than five years ago, make sure your resume (or company’s brochure) points out that you have more than twenty-five years experience in the same rut.

Seventh Commandment: Join an Old Farts Club.

Basically, the idea here is that you want to keep a closed mind to new ideas and to not keep up with the latest trends in the arts and technology. You want your brain to rust. This is impossible to do if you associate with younger people. Young people are always on the cutting edge. So limit your friends and acquaintances to people who are at least over 50. If you don’t know many people over 50 consider joining an old farts club.

The biggest and best known old farts club (in the U. S.) is the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). As soon as you hit forty-nine and a half you are eligible to join and you should take advantage of this. You will have to make further efforts after becoming a member before you can actually start commiserating with your fellow AARPers, so sign up as early as possible to get the ball rolling. The best thing about joining AARP is that you will start to receive magazines and literature that constantly remind you of what it’s like to get old. At forty-nine and a half, this is a great way to start conditioning your mind into believing that you are over the hill, your health is going to fail at any moment, and the world is passing you by.

Once you’ve joined AARP you can then associate yourself with two or three groups of old farts in your local neighborhood. Most community centers have senior citizens activities. Check them out. Your church probably has an adult education or Sunday school program where you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone under fifty. Find a bingo parlor. Attend matinees of foreign films. Take specially organized tours with the other old farts of your community. Play the slot machines at your local casino. Hang out at the OTB.

Of course your ultimate old farts club goal should be to live in a retirement community—preferably a gated one that doesn’t allow overnight visits of children. If you’re not yet ready for this step, try finding an adults only condominium to live in for a few years first. You’ll get there eventually.

Eighth Commandment: Go for the Senior Discounts.

It’s great being old. Look at all the things you can save money on!

There are so many discounts to be had. Movies, zoos, amusement parks, museums, public transportation—why should a re-tired person like yourself have to pay the same high prices as everyone else? After all, it’s not your fault that the 40-year old standing in front of you has to pay full price. Never mind that he and his wife are working two jobs each to keep shoes on their kids. It’s their duty to subsidize your movie ticket as well, right?

What you want to do—to keep yourself feeling old, remember?—is to make a big deal about getting your fair markdown. Everywhere you go you should ask if they have a senior discount. Instead of just asking at the museums and movie theatres, ask at Macy’s. Ask if they have a senior discount at Tiffany’s. Ask at the dentist. Ask at the dry cleaners. Ask at the gas station. Ask the dog walker, the newspaper boy and the Girl Scout Cookie girl. Ask the cop who gives you a parking ticket.

And if you can’t get a senior discount at your favorite restaurant at least go for the early bird special. You’ll get a similar price cut—but at the same time you can apply what you learned in the Seventh Commandment because the restaurant will be packed with other old farts in a hurry to get home and to bed early (Third Commandment).

Ninth Commandment: Talk Down to Young People.

If you’ve been following the previous eight rules you should be pretty much insulated from the younger generation by now and you could almost skip this one. But occasionally there will still come those annoying moments when you must actually talk to someone under 25. To keep yourself feeling old and superior—not to mention making yourself look ridiculous—you must learn to talk down to them. There are two ways to do this.

The first is to lower your elocution to what you presume is the lower comprehension level of the person to whom you are speaking. If you’ve raised children you’ve probably already done this. Speak in modified baby talk to anyone under seven—as in, “Does little Taylor Taylor need to go tinkle tinkle before we get in the car?” Taylor will think you are talking about someone else because you have referred to her in the third person. She won’t understand what you are trying to communicate but will assume from your tone of voice that you don’t respect her innate intelligence. With the eight to twenty-one year-old set you can pretty much speak in your normal tone of voice as long as you never ask their opinion on anything.

The other way to talk down is to use the Great Wizard of Oz method. Constantly remind young people just how much more knowledgeable and wiser you are. Be officious. Pontificate. Hold court. Hold staff meetings. Pay no attention to their rolling eyes.

Tenth Commandment: Remember the Good Old Days.

Nothing will make you feel old like living in the past. And nothing will make you appear older to those around you than if you constantly talk about the good old days. There are several ways you can perfect this skill.

Begin with the “I Remember When I Was Your Age” Technique. Of course, no one really remembers what it was like when they were someone else’s age and that’s the beauty of this approach. You can make it up as you go along. Use this technique when discussing something kids can do today that you couldn’t. For example: “No one ever drove me to school. I remember when I was your age I had to walk two miles to get to school. Often it was snowing. My coat wasn’t all that warm. I didn’t have any shoes. It was up hill both ways.”

Next is the “What, You’ve Never Heard of Kate Smith?” Technique. Obviously it doesn’t really have to be Kate Smith. It can be Buddy Holly, Dale Carnegie or Adlai Stevenson. It can be anyone (preferably dead) as long as the other (younger) person has never heard of him. The great thing about this technique is that you can combine it with the Ninth Commandment and, once you’ve explained who the person was, launch into a long pontification as well.

Then there’s the “Back in My Day” Technique. Use this when you are bemoaning the passing of better times. Like, “Back in my day we always got dressed up to go to church.” Or, “Back in my day you could eat the fish you caught.”

Of course, if we’re honest with ourselves we must admit that the good old days were not always that great. But don’t let that hold you back from expressing your remembrance of things past. Collect memorabilia, go to high school reunions, watch old movies, listen to Lawrence Welk, join the VFW, join Classmates.com. Remember the Alamo. Remember the Maine. Remember the good old days

Some people never seem to get old no matter how long they live. Dick Clark is a good example. The guy looked like a teenager most of his life and even now he still looks much younger than his age. Perhaps part of it is due to his genes—or his plastic surgeon. But my guess is that there’s more to it than that. His business keeps him around young people and he stays current with the latest trends in pop culture. It’s impossible to do that and be an old fart at the same time.

There’s a difference between getting old and aging. When my father turned seventy I asked him how that made him feel. He said he couldn’t care less because he didn’t feel a day over fifty. That impressed me. Now in his eighties, while he has aged, he has not gotten old. He travels extensively, he goes on dates, he keeps in touch with his scattered children via e-mail, and he works his fifteen acre “ranch” daily. Dad didn’t fall victim to the conspirators. Let’s resolve that we won’t either.

© Copyright 2003, Richard Bradley. All rights reserved.