Come and get me, AARP

It can't be a coincidence: On the very day I turned 50 years old, I received an invitation to the annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society.

Great. As if hitting 50 wasn't bad enough, I got a gender identity crisis along with it.

The next day was only marginally better. Like everyone else, I regularly get e-mail messages that offer Viagra for sale. The day after my 50th birthday, there was a sudden flurry of them. What's more, the e-mail come-ons from people purporting to be lonely young women who are searching for new friends -- male, preferably, with active credit cards -- seem to be tailing off. Maybe they've figured out that until I buy the Viagra, there's not much point.

There's one group I haven't heard from yet, but it'll be any day now: AARP.

As I'm sure you know, AARP is the Washington, D.C.-based organization that tends to the interests of people in a certain age demographic. (OK, "geezers." ) In the past, the actual name of the group was American Association of Retired Persons. But now that half of its 35 million members are still in the work force, somebody must have realized the name had become semi-fraudulent. So now it's just AARP, which doesn't stand for anything.

Except this, maybe: Awesome At Recruiting People.

When you turn 50, AARP is going to find you. Count on it. If you've ever noted your date of birth on some innocent document -- one of those warranty cards you mail in after buying something, for instance -- that bit of information invariably finds its way to AARP. It's then tucked away on an AARP database, along with your address, and the day you hit 50, the machinery cranks up.

The fact that Jimmy Hoffa has remained missing all these many years is proof that he never filled out a warranty card in his life. Otherwise, AARP would have found him.

Once AARP has tracked you down, it pulls a deft bit of sleight of hand. It sends you a "record of enrollment," which looks suspiciously like a membership card, and asks you to return a "registration" form, along with your check.

You know how it is with us old people. We're easily befuddled. We become members without even realizing it.

A few people resist being swept along with this tide, however. To them, hearing from AARP on the occasion of their 50th birthday is not a welcome event. It is tacit proof that they have crossed that dreaded demographic line: They are officially old.

Those are the people who go to the trouble to ask AARP not to send them a membership "registration." Sometimes that request is offered in a vivid fashion -- scribbled rudely across the form and returned to the AARP membership processing office.

AARP spokesman Tom Otwell says that less than 1 percent of the people who are solicited for membership ask that they not be contacted again, "and the vast majority are civil requests." The others, he acknowledges, are people who are exhibiting the early signs of "curmudgeon-itis."

I can't wait until AARP sends me my personal "record of enrollment." I'm going to see if I can't increase that percentage a bit.