#36 Colon Down the River

Seems there was this research done that said in another five years there will be more people over the age of sixty-five alive than in all of history. No, not at any time in history. In 2010, the folks that are 65 will outnumber all the folks that were ever 65. Kinda makes you wanna go aarp doesn’t it? Or some other involuntary choking sound. Part of it is that the first wave of post-World War Two baby boomers will be hitting the beaches of retirement. And part of it is that it’s likely the parents who spawned them will also still be alive. Life expectancy is kicking out to 107.
The walker industry is even now licking its lips. This generation of oldsters ain’t gonna settle for plain aluminum with white plastic caps and a couple of casters. Walkers of tomorrow are gonna be graphite with blue lacquer and neon graphics, dude. Motorized chairs the same way. They’ll be styling man, Centenarians will be popping wheelies, ripping brodies and drag-racing down the diaper aisle with the wild abandon only incontinence can bring. Mark my words, the first wheelchair with a pimped out ride is right around the corner.
With most of America on the verge of, or already in the middle of retirement, Costco, who commissioned the research, is making product changes to keep it competitive in the emerging maturing market. Smaller portions are on the horizon. Giant slabs of beef in forty-pound three-packs will give way to smaller 4-ounce cuts, tenderized for easy mastication. Bushel bags of bananas, requiring a family of 8 to guarantee consumption before the dread banana blackening, will be scaled back to smaller bunches that aging couples can gum at their leisure. Younger relatives will no longer be forced to endure weekly installments of granny’s bananny bread.
There’ll also be more home delivery options in an attempt to serve sequestered septuagenarians.
Costco will still try to figure out a way to let their customers benefit from the economy of quantity. Plans are already in the works for modifications to the current extra-large laundry detergent jugs. The handle and spout contraptions that currently require cleaning and jerking a fifty-pound bottle up to washing machine level will be replaced by a container just as large, but with a siphon arrangement. It will also have an extendable handle and hidden wheels, just like the non-carry carry on bags currently so popular with overhead bin hogs on every major airline. Of course the supplement aisle will expand to include even more exotic herbal and age-prolonging concoctions. Most of which will feature larger quantities of fiber. Metamusil containers will also come with handles and wheels. Because soon lounge lizards from the seventies will be crossing over to the golden years, making the psychological transition from cologne to colon. From Hai Karate to High Colonic.
Costco has asked their research oracle the big marketing question: What product can help us survive in a world of oldsters? And the answer? Depends.
America, ya gotta love it.