RAGING GRANNIES, GRAY PANTHERS, AND OTHER VANGUARD TROOPS

I turned 65 recently. It was an interesting experience. I now have Medicare, and Social Security, and a small state pension plus retiree health insurance from Illinois, and half-price passes for the bus and the train, and occasional cut-rate "senior special" meals at local eateries. It's not bad.

But what I find especially attractive is that I now have very little to lose. I'm still working, but I could live without the income if I had to. My days are numbered--I have started listing my relatives from my parents' generation and their ages at death, so I've got a pretty good idea how much time I have left, and how much of it is actually "good time," during which I can do something useful. Gruesome? I don't think so. Like any other deadline, it helps me get organized.

The generations after mine have all kinds of scary stuff hanging over them that I no longer have to worry about, or never did. Student loans, for instance. I'm a member of the last generation of lawyers to finish law school with no loans. My friends ten or twenty years younger are still paying theirs, and may well have to keep doing it long after they could otherwise have retired. The Supreme Court recently ruled that if you're getting Social Security and you've defaulted on your student loans, they can take the money from your benefits.

Or trying to keep a splendid-looking resume--once you're past 50, nothing else on your resume matters. To hell with it. Yes, there are laws against age discrimination. There are all kinds of legal rights working people supposedly have. Try to get them enforced.
Hoo ha.

Sex appeal--who needs it? I keep myself neat and clean and attired suitably for the pursuit in which I am engaged at the moment. My husband loves me, and other guys occasionally still hit on me.

Government wiretapping and eavesdropping--who cares? At the click of a google, the government can find out most of what it wants to know about me. As I prepare to settle into dignified obscurity, all they can accomplish by busting me is publicize the causes I have worked for. Sounds like a fair trade.

I have increasing respect for organizations of radical seniors, like Raging Grannies, the Gray Panthers, and local groups like Chicago's Metro Seniors in Action. They aren't just fighting for Social Security and Medicare, they're fighting for a decent world for the next generation, because the System keeps the next generation too busy and intimidated to fight for itself. We are the last group left that has any time for amateur politics, and has nothing to lose by engaging in them. Elders of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose.