"Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional."
- Chili Davis, hitting coach for the Oakland As
Can you get your head around the idea of Jimmy Choo with suction cups on the soles? How about a hearing aid/earring with enough serious karat action to rival a star's borrowed jewellery on Oscar night? And can you fathom a sleek and sexy mobility scooter, activated by the touch of a smart phone button, which collapses down when it's not needed?
The first two? Not so much - yet. But the scooter - at least, a prototype of it - made a dramatic appearance at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show.
It's called the KOBOT and while it's not quite ready for prime time, it is definitely a reflection of the shape of things to come.
Boomers, to clumsily paraphrase the poet Dylan Thomas, have no intention of going gentle into that good night.
We still want to die before we get old. We're just intent on postponing the aging process as long as we can. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted a few years ago, among adults 65 and older, fully 60 per cent say they feel younger than their chronological age.
Phil Goodman, author of Boomers: The Ageless Generation, calls us adult teenagers - and the orthotic fits.
What all this means is that we want to flame out in style, with dignity to boot.
We take ownership of taste. At the feet of Steve Jobs, we have learned to venerate design. And as we geezers turn to prosthetics and other products to help us seize the day, they had better be cool.
Industry, you'd better believe, is starting to listen.
Sure, the 18-to-34 set is still beloved by marketers for their impulse purchases of new digital toys. But we have the serious spending money, and if we're getting finicky about canes and walkers, opportunity knocks for those who are paying attention.
John Martin, president of a research company in the U.S. called the Boomer Project, says we are in a "longevity economy" and "a growing portion of our economy will be based on the behaviours, needs and desires of the 50-plus market."
Listen to marketing guru Lori Bitter, who started something called the Move Beyond Age movement last year. "We wanted to start a global conversation about design, with the belief that when products are designed smarter for older consumers, they function better for everyone," she writes in a blog.
"Since the launch, we have brought this message to big-box retailers, technology companies, housing developers, health-care organizations, packaged-goods companies, aging organizations and hundreds of others. Conversations range from how to 're-tool' senior products for boomers, to how to appeal to the largest demographic in today's marketplace."
Translation: what manufacturers are hearing is ka-ching! And they are responding as fast as they can.
It's not just big-ticket items that are involved, either. The concept of ageless design is having an impact on many products we use every day.
Matt Thornhill, another marketing expert with The Boomer Project, cites packaging as a likely target for change. He describes an irritation we've all experienced - the "package rage" of trying to open something that has been shrink-wrapped in impenetrable plastic. Already, he points out, the Internet shopping behemoth Amazon is offering its customers delivery of goods that are free of this prison.
"The inevitability of the age shift - more older people and fewer younger people - means the future will contain more of these examples of package designs that delight older boomers, and everyone else at any age," he writes.
"The companies that figure out this future sooner are much more likely to grab market share and expand, even in a slow economy. It's no secret the ones that still make packaging an obstacle are going to suffer the consequences."
We are boomers, hear us roar. We want clean lines and utility. We want swank and we want elegance, too.
Let's face it: we're demanding snobs who barrel through the universe, altering everything we touch.
Every so often, though, we get things right. If simple functionality with a dollop of chic can help us age gracefully - when we finally concede that we're aging - I'm all for it.
