NEW ORLEANS — Armed with our recently attained 50th birthdays, still-shiny membership cards and media credentials, Dre and I attended our first AARP conference. The event, Life@50+, took place Sept. 20-22 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and attracted a reported 25,000 registrants.
The event promised a dizzying plethora of speeches, workshops, workout sessions, movies, concerts, exhibits, information-gathering opportunities and a chance to perform public service projects. The conference also presented attendees with the chance to see, hear and, in some cases, meet such AARP-age, still-cool celebrities as Billy Crystal, Gladys Knight, Ben Vereen, Jane Pauley, Dan Marino, Cicely Tyson, Emeril Lagasse, LeVar Burton, Leeza Gibbons, Martina Navratilova and Chris “Pursuit of Happyness” Gardner.
But we went wondering if, beneath all the hype, the conference would basically be a come-to-life version of those Old People’s Catalogs. Would we be greeted with a sea of raised toilet seats, bathtubs with doors, fancy canes and walkers, Big Band music and relentless ads for Cialis? Would there be representatives of assisted-living complexes plugging their shuffleboard facilities?
What we found out: The conference offered something for the youthful, still hip and still hippie-fied; the Little Old Ladies/Little Old Men; and everyone in between.
Health, care giving, fitness, family, finances, dating, nostalgia and technology were among the topics explored. The theme that truly struck a chord with us, as we’re sure it did with many, is “Life Reimagined.” In creative ways, senior citizens were reminded of the possibilities in building new lives for themselves ... not just in the wake of retirement or widow/widowerhood, but in the wake of layoffs, trashed retirement accounts and other curves thrown by the recession and a rapidly changing world that bears little or no resemblance to their parents’ golden years.
Sessions included short interviews with a number of well- and lesser-known celebrities who had readjusted their lives for the better. A recurring thread was the encouragement to make one’s own job and become one’s own boss.
As expected, health care - Medicare and Social Security in particular - were big topics, especially during an opening show that featured President Barack Obama via satellite and vice-presidential candidate/Jake Gyllenhaal sorta-look-alike Paul Ryan in person. Each candidate took his turn with the subject and, if you’ve followed politics or read other news reports of the session, you pretty much know or can guess what was said. Although AARP bills itself as nonpartisan, the majority of conference attendees were in the president’s camp, judging by their responses.
Our other observations:
If you’ve just reached AARP age - 50 - and want people to flatter you on how young you look, attend one of these conferences. You may be told, as we were, that you don’t look old enough to be a member.
If you want to defy age in general, attend an AARP conference. There’s enough walking to do. Enough chances to eat food your doctor probably warned you about. Enough chances to show your remaining vigor by flitting from booth to booth during a gazillion-vendor expo, collecting commemorative pins - some of which light up and flash - and sign up to win various gewgaws. (Dre and I skipped a Saturday afternoon “Are You Really Going to Eat That” panel in favor of 11th-hour pin collecting.) There are enough chances to prove that you are not too old and grouchy to deal with crowds and still have the patience to deal with the few grouchy or less-than considerate folks you might encounter.
And - at least during the opening show - more than enough long speeches to prove that yes, you can stay awake during those things.
Next week: Draws in the sand (a phrase having nothing to do with art) in Biloxi, Miss.; performance art takes on a whole new dimension during French Quarter weekends.
Enough about AARP; e-mail HRPW at:
Style, Pages 52 on 09/30/2012