Take Me Out of the Coffin, I’m Still Alive!

Hope I Never Forget These Moments

Stop digging into the soil for my coffin, I'm not dead yet. I may appear like a study of a fruit bowl if you saw me, because of my lack of animation, but that is because I celebrated my 72nd birthday yesterday.

Recently the Wall Street Journal wrote about the segmentation of selling to different age groups, especially old Altercockers like me. Peddling products and services to senior citizens is very different than selling to well-heeled yuppies. The young whipper-snappers have the sense that everything is possible while the old timers are wondering which nursing home they will wind up in. People on social security don’t care about tomorrow since their yesterdays are so cluttered. Advertisers not only have to deal with this reality but also the limited faculties of the elderly and the fact that many old timers are getting Alzheimer’s earlier and earlier. How do you market to someone with no memory?

According to a PBS special last week that highlighted the burgeoning number of citizens with Alzheimer’s, over a half million Americans under age 50 Alzheimer’s already have it. If you don’t know what it is it basically means that your brain died and that you don’t remember your past.

The most poignant scene in this special was when a woman whose husband was recently diagnosed cried. She feared the day when he will look into her eyes and not know who she is.

The youth of America live under of the cloud of autism and the stumbling, cane-holding, old-timers live in the shadow of Alzheimer’s. And the advertisers market and sell to us all – brain dead or no.

You voyeurs reading these words at your computer are already brain-dead so when you get Alzheimer’s there will be no discernible change in your appearance. You were born intellectually crippled and your point of travel between birth and dead is like a drunk’s vomit - totally forgettable. The fact that George W. Bush was elected a second time is proof positive that most Americans are imbeciles, zombies or have Alzheimer’s already.