Totally lost my grip reading an article in the Sunday paper by a nationally syndicated columnist, Helen Dennis who writes Successful Aging. The article was about how funny birthday cards for old people are ageist and gave examples of cards that say stuff my friends and I always say to each other anyway and then gave examples of (gag me) cards that sound like a handout at a motivational speaker course. This nonsense is created by a woman named Janine Vanderburg, a community activist whose goal is to change the narrative. Fine, whatever. I’m changing that narrative whenever I get the chance (remember I learned to scuba at age 64, and I’m sure I’m not done doing crazy stuff yet).

But don’t mess with my birthday cards. You want to send a schmaltzy card to me telling me how wise and awesome I am, I’m cool with that, but my favorite cards are the funny ones and always have been.

Rarely am I so incensed or delighted that I write an immediate letter to the columnist, but this one really got my goat. I was just mildly miffed until the end of the article where the columnist asked Vanderburg about using funny cards “as a vehicle for humor, allowing us to laugh at ourselves and making sure we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Her reply: ‘My message is clear, Don’t send ageist birthday cards.’”

Is everyone out there who knows me putting on their body armor? Someone telling Mary “don’t”?

Here’s what I sent off.

Dear Helen,

Rarely am I driven to respond to a column immediately, but your column on “ageist” birthday cards really pushed my buttons.  How dare Vanderburg decree to those of us in the silver set that we should not send nor want to receive humorous “ageist” birthday cards!  Isn’t getting old in this society difficult enough without you now telling us we can’t laugh at ourselves? What’s next? No funny articles about looking for our glasses and realizing they are on our heads? No laughing about how it DOES take us twice as long to do anything well? No giggling with our girlfriends about how crazy it is how our bodies change as we age and how we find ourselves looking at our mothers’ faces in the mirror? 

Look, we all get that it’s an ageist society.    We all get that Alzheimer’s and all other age related illnesses are not funny in and of themselves.  I take pride in breaking the stereotypes whenever I get the opportunity.  I’ve retired after 40 years of providing physical therapy in geriatric settings.  I have laughed with many over the trials and tribulations of aging and indeed they have TAUGHT me how to do that. (I have also seen the  humorless Vanderburgs of the world and they explicitly taught me how I do NOT want to age.)   

The most insulting part of your article is that although we are apparently wise, venerable, faithful friends, fun and spectacular, we are not allowed to share a joke with like minded older friends of both sexes on our birthdays and still have loads of old person self esteem when we’re done laughing.  All those lovely sentiments about being charming and cherished are what are written by hand after the laughing stops and it is those handwritten notes that are what we re-read weeks later and sometimes keep to look back on when a loved one precedes us in the final act of aging.  

How sad that Vanderburg misses this opportunity to enjoy the absurdity of life at the time of life when we are most free to laugh about it.  

Peace be with you.