What Are My Commercials Trying to Tell Me

If for some weird reason I didn’t know how old I was, I could tell by the TV shows we watch. More specifically, by the commercials that run during those shows.

Mostly they feature folks, either gray-haired or that vague blond color that you can’t tell what color it really is, in knit clothing two sizes too big, blue gray so they blend into the background, walking or playing with the dog, or watching the grandkids run through the sprinkler. Is there some significance in the sprinkler—like is my life quickly spraying away while the young dance around me?

These old people are smiling big toothy smiles. And they’re fighting disease, usually diabetes, but cancer is also popular, as is erectile disfunction.

That’s how I can tell that what we’re watching is being widely circulated in hospital rooms across the country. Because they’re hoping to get in that last shot at my cash before I check out.

What appalls me is who the sponsors think I’m going to identify with. Do I really look that bad all the time? And do they seriously think I’m going into my doctor’s and saying “I’ve seen a commercial that promises to cure me! Do you think we should take it seriously?”

Everyone is carefully calibrated to be the same amount of overweight that I am. Not baggy saggy huge grandma but definitely a cookies and milk at four kind of figure. Ice cream after dinner grandpas.

So what should they advertise? I’d like a couple of teenagers. You kind of understand their charm the further away you are from having to raise them. And they’re handy for lawns and chores you don’t want to do. Who cleaned my bathroom all those years?

And it would be good to have a device that gave you a little jiggle when you repeated yourself—really. I KNOW I don’t repeat things as often as my kids tell me, but I wouldn’t mind something objective giving me a buzz. Rather than after my doctor’s appointment remembering that I’ve said the same thing to him about ten times.

I’d also like a book that translates what the doctor says into less alarming language. What I’m really going to die from and what not so much. Usually the nurse comes in after and says not to worry, people live with such and such for years. Meanwhile you’re sobbing on the inside thinking about what hymns you want at the funeral.

And some sort of fat removal system that requires you to eat exactly what you’ve been eating your whole life, because I’ll tell you right now, anything that happens to you later in life will be because you’re too fat! And believe me, you will rue every bite that went into that little mouth of yours.