My On the Way Out series, Vol. 1, Part 4

 An old man's thoughts...a look at media ads...and some other off-the-wall observations

Suddenly a bell has gone off in my head...or maybe the bell has just decided to stop ringing.

Maybe, it is just part of the process as we age our way down the final road in life. Suddenly, I see nothing but beauty on both sides of the highway. Suddenly, I no longer need to be appreciated, no longer need to be acknowledged, or accepted. The constant battle within to be competitive...to win the race and celebrate every milestone is no longer a priority. Instead, I'm ready to let up...ease off the gas pedal...and just be.

Flash! The senior citizen is no longer and has never been, in the thought process of an advertising executive. I mean how many ads are on television of old people partying on the beach with a bucket full of ice-cold beer at their fingertips.

Yes, a smart ad executive knows there's a small market out there for old people. I mean, how many times do you see Pat Boone pushing you to buy gold coins, or better yet, and a little more current, there's Tom Selleck, front and center, trying to convince you to do a reverse mortgage?

We old people would rather tune in to an old Western and watch Quigley, from Down Under, destroy the bad guys. As for Mr. Boone, how old is he and does he do those ads with white buckskin shoes on, or does he have a pair of comfortable tennis shoes on, hidden below the camera line?

My goodness, Boone is 88, just 11 years older than yours truly and Selleck, the original Magnum, is 77 and has enough money in the bank to buy up his share of mortgages and I doubt he'll need to be reversing any of those.

Back in the day, an actor would show up in black and white on the screen of an RCA television or one of those new-fangled Curtis Mathis console types, the ones you would need a pod to remove from the house. A pod has many meanings for a senior citizen these days, but in this case, a detachable self-contained unit to carry away your belongings -- you know, just before your next step: when you take full advantage of your long-term care policy -- if you are lucky enough to have such a thing.

And getting back to old Westerns. Why do older men revert to watching Judge Roy Bean clean up the town with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other? Or why, do we watch Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in High Noon hundreds and hundreds of times, over and over again?

The answer is: it's an escape. A place to unwind. That's if you still need to. The beauty is you can come back in an hour and instead: enjoy a grandson buckle up with his first gun and holster set or maybe it's your granddaughter, whether she knows it or not, running around the room acting like Annie Oakley or Shirley Temple.

It's all relative. It's all part of life. Enjoy it while you can.

Photo: of the author, who loves life...and old Western movies, too.