The First Old-Age Influencer

I recently read about a 36-year old female "lifestyle influencer" on TikTok who has earned tons of money telling people what to eat, where to eat and how to decorate their homes. She joins hundreds of other "influencers" who earn a living by posting videos online, sharing their expertise on certain topics, some of them imaginary. So I figured I'd jump into this crazy world and get rich by reporting what I know about growing older, in the hope that my 79 years of experience might help someone on the bumpy road to assisted living. 

Wrinkles Doctors urge young people to stop smoking with warnings about lung cancer, oral cancer, throat cancer, COPD and the like. They obviously have not succeeded since cigarette smoking continues to flourish; these days the average price for a pack of 20 is $8.00, and can be as high as $12.00 in some states. What doctors should be telling people is that smoking causes wrinkles. I smoked for 40 years, on and off, and now have the skin of an elephant, although thankfully it is not grey. I started using moisturizer in my 40s but that was too late; all it does is sink into the wrinkles.

Stiff Joints I am fortunate not to have stiff joints since I do CrossFit exercises several times a week, and was a runner for 20 years before I had to stop to have hip replacement surgery. So here's the deal: I ruined my hip by daily running, but now I walk and all is well. Exercise is the key, and the only route to a decent dotage. If you never started, boo hoo for you, but start now.

Dying Friends 
Old people die, there's no getting around that. So if you have a lot of old friends, eventually you will have a lot of dead friends. Even worse, you'll have to watch them die and attend lots of funerals. My advice is to befriend people who are about 20 years younger than you, and certainly marry someone at least 10 your junior. Otherwise you'll be hanging out with a lot of stiff-jointed, wrinkled old coots who can never do anything fun because they have a doctor's appointment.

Avoid Obesity Getting fat is the worst thing you can do to your body and will age you faster than every other bad habit, not to mention ruin your looks, if you ever had any. (Old and fat is a bad combo.) To avoid this horrible fate you must eat well, have tons of spinach and other vegetables, don't drink alcohol, at least not much, and stay away from cakes, pies, tarts, donuts, cookies, candy, pretzels, pizza, pasta, chips, dips, Chinese food and anything else that tastes fabulous.

Black Coffee Only Adding cream and sugar, or even just cream, to your coffee is dumb. It will add thousands of calories to your diet over the years, not to mention it's disgusting.

That's all for now. Follow me for more tips on how to stave off the Grim Reaper and look good doing it. Oh, and send me money.