How to be cool when you're afraid you've forgotten how . . .
Sure, you can try to stay younger by exercising, coloring your hair, and wearing stylish clothes—but how do you respond when someone asks, "Do you Twitter?" How Not to Act Old gives you simple ways to come back from over the hill and to act as young as you look.
Covering everything from old-people entertainment (cancel that dinner party!) to old-people communication (it's called a "voice mail," not a "message," and no one leaves or listens to them anyway), Pamela Redmond Satran decodes the behaviors, viewpoints, and cultural touchstones that separate you from the hip young person you wish you still were. This irreverent guide is essential for anyone who doesn't want to embarrass their kids—or themselves.
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You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll tell all your friends to run out and buy it. How Not to Act Old is an instruction manual and life coach in book form for baby boomers trying desperately to stay cool, and their Evil Young progeny who make fun of them. Even those of us who like to believe (okay, delude ourselves) that we know what's going on will recognize ourselves in Satran's witty, shrewd, razor-sharp observations. And to be clear: Satran's not really suggesting that we give up dancing to Springsteen or drinking vodka, only that we understand that a whole new generation is watching and snickering. We used to be them, and now we're not. This is the funniest book I've read all year.
Oh, Pamela Redmond Satran, did you secretly interview BOTH my 20-something daughters before writing this book? I won't let them see your hilarious and painfully true book because you confirm everything they've ever said to me. I don't think I could handle hearing "What did we TELL you?" that many times. I will, however, consider figuring out how to use my cellphone, re-think my notion of "dress shoes" and maybe even give up the Cosmopolitan in favor of the Kamikaze. I may even try to sleep past 6:30 AM on weekends. (At least I'll be savvy enough to avoid sending any incriminating time-stamped e-mails if I fail.)
If you are in the workplace NOW, you need this book. If you believe in fantasy, that is you're retired and will NEVER have to work again, you really need this book. Financiual realities have taken away that blissful picture of roaming the country in a motorhome with a bullet proof nest egg tucked securely away. There is no more "securely". Your choice now is either working at McDonalds or as a greeter at Walmart. Maybe not if you are smart enough to heed at least some of the advice in this handy book. Recognizing yourself in the simple one-page anecdotes may be just enough of a push to change up your stlye. Even Darwin pointed out, without change there is no future. If we have to keep working through our golden years, we want the best job that pays the most money in the easiest environment. That requires good appearance and a current mindset. We did it once, the second time will be so much easier. So don't throw in the towel. Instead use the towel to dust off your monitor, upload some conversation points and wave it overhead in a victory cheer!
This very funny little book is social satire masquerading as self-help. (It's also a send-up of self-help books, avoiding which is--delicious irony--another way How Not To Act Old.) Who is being satirized? The young! And quite perceptively. Also those who would mimic them (whose number would not include anyone hip enough to buy "How Not To Act Old"). Slim as this volume is, it's loaded with amusing specifics. The author proves herself a shrewd observer of human nature and a writer with many arrows in her quiver.
Granted that many people seem to find this a spoof, a send-up, and so on, I think a social scientist would have a field day analyzing the attitudes that inform this exercise. In the first place, everything is couched in terms of pop culture, which assumes that those are the only earmarks by which to measure how with-it someone is. In the second place, I'm not sure who the beneficiary of this advice is. One's (old?) peers would dress and act the same out-of-it way, and the young will not be fooled into thinking you are also young, no matter where your jeans fit on your waist...or not. In the third place, it's always been the privilege of youth to have its own code words, its own dress style, its own music, and so on---an exclusive club. Gate crashers are not welcome, and are quickly identified as bogus. In the fourth place, age has its own status if one has real achievements, and a self-confidence that can't be bought any other way. That in itself is sexy. Finally, the author betrayed her own lack of hipness when she listed a turtleneck as something no one should ever wear, lest it betray old-fogey-ness. Tell it to Steve Jobs, who is about the coolest guy on the planet and who invented iPods and all the rest of the hip new gadgets.
A Hugo Award-winning sci-fi classic, this is a must read if you have a sci-fi...
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