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Health & Fitness

Terry Flanagan: TV Ads ... When the Moment is Wrong

Waiting for the moment to be right sounds more like a vigil than a romantic interlude.

I sometimes wonder what the demographics of the typical NFL football TV audience are. If the commercials are any clue, the vast majority must be guys my age who believe that magic beans and a little hair dye will turn them into 20-year-old studs again. If there’s not a commercial showing some retired professional athlete coloring his hair or beard and suddenly becoming the object of desire to women less than half his age, then there’s a commercial with a retired couple who apparently spend all of their waking hours waiting for the right moment.

There was a time when we didn’t discuss geriatric sex because with rare exceptions it was physically impossible and the thought of it made most people squirm. But that was before Viagra (R), Cialis (R), and dozens of other similar products.

All of this has changed Madison Avenue’s idea of leisure time for retired couples. Many of us used to think that the typical day for a retired couple consisted of golf or possibly tennis during the day, an afternoon nap, dinner around 4, and bedtime right after the 6 o’clock news. The night owls among them might play Bingo in the early evening and possibly stay up as late as (gasp) 9 p.m. The elderly spent their vacations in Branson, MO, listening to singers dragged out of mothballs and disturbingly animated on stage, kind of like the characters at Chuck E. Cheese. Growing old may have been boring, but it was relatively benign.

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That was before miracle drugs were able to extend our libido well beyond the grave. Hugh Hefner is no longer the only octogenarian trying to date twenty-somethings. Suddenly geezers everywhere are having delusional fantasies about much younger women. Isn’t science wonderful? We’re still light years from a cure for cancer, Alzheimer’s, or even diabetes, but with modern medicine we’ve come to expect that even a cadaver should enjoy a healthy, active sex life.

If the commercials are any indicator, retired couples now spend their golden years lounging around in hot tubs or lying in hammocks waiting for the right moment. Gray-haired guys, who used to sneak out of the house early in the morning with rod and tackle box, have discovered that fishing is boring no matter how much beer you drink. So now they’re staying home, waiting for the yellow pills to kick in.

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Apparently, one never quite knows when this will happen, so the idea is to stay close to home. There’s no time for golf or tennis because you wouldn’t want the right moment to come along when you’re trying to sink a putt on the ninth green. Neither would the golfers behind you waiting to play through.

But with all of our newly-discovered virility, there are still some realities that we must face. The advertisers haven’t overlooked these scenarios either, and there are also plenty of ads for products that address other issues of aging, such as the curse of the grizzled Lothario—overactive bladder. When we’re not waiting for the right moment, it seems we old codgers are desperately trying to avoid the wrong moment. If we’re not hoping to satisfy one urge, we’re hoping to stifle a more embarrassing urge and trying to find the closest bathroom before it’s too late. Because nothing kills a romantic evening like discovering you missed the crucial moment and need a cleanup in Aisle 6 instead.

Fortunately, we have pills for that, too. But no matter how many pills we take, we aren’t going to permanently forestall the aging process. At some point we have to accept who we are and try to maintain a little dignity. We all know there’s no fool like an old fool, but most of us have a hard time recognizing when we happen to be the old fool.

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