In 2020, They Get By With a Little Help From Their Car

The year is 2020. Baby boomers are no longer babies. They are no longer booming. They are what the cruel call the Senile Majority.

Dirk Miller, 70, and his wife, Bree Wellington, sixtysomething, are coming out of a restaurant when they hear a beggar with a synthesizer playing an old Beatles tune, “When I’m 64.”

Dirk starts to sing, “When I grow older, losing my brains. . . .”

Bree starts laughing. “That’s not how it went. It’s: ‘When I grow older, losing my gums, many years from now--Will ya still be sending me some turpentine, something, something, bottle of wine. . . .’ ”

“Whatever,” said Dirk, unplugging the car from the recharging lot.

“Boy, that was a great meal,” said Bree. “I just love Iraqi food.”

“I know, the Date Decadence was to die for,” Dirk said, switching on the ignition.

“And how about that Camel Hair Pasta?” Bree said, tucking her jowls back under the accordion skin flap. “Remember when there was a Vietnamese restaurant in that same place?”

“Not really,” Dirk admitted, adjusting the lens on the windshield.

“Hey,” Bree said, opening the drug compartment. “Want a few Vitamin Es--sublingual?”

“Thanks, Hon, but they’re included in my subcu pump.”

“I’ve got to get one of those,” said Bree. “There was something I wanted to talk to you about, but I can’t remember.”

“Something about Arsenio finally being out of the house?” he said, referring to their youngest, Arsenio Kyle Miller-Wellington, who had finally gotten his own apartment. Tonight’s dinner was in celebration of that event. “It wasn’t my idea to have a kid in our late 40s.”

“That old argument again,” Bree said, taking off her nails. “Look, I told you, I was afraid that if I waited until menopause the womb transplant wouldn’t work. How was I to know that in two years we’d have the technology for women to have babies until well into their 80s?”

“Yeah,” said Dirk, making a right onto Richard Nixon Parkway, “but they never came up with the technology for having a teen-ager in your 60s! By the way, I hear that with the latest research, women can continue having babies forever. Do you believe in birth after death?”

“Research!” said Bree tucking her recently tucked tummy under the air bag sensor. “That’s what I wanted to tell you about. There’s some new research that shows that people who smoked marijuana when they were young have a return of memory loss from the time they smoked.”

“You’re kidding,” said Dirk, turning off the radio.

“What a minute! Turn that back!” said Bree, scanning. “Damn. You lost that. That was my favorite song, ‘California Dreamin’.’ ”

“The Stones, right?” said Dirk, getting off the parkway near the new McDonald’s Golden Ramen.

“No, not the Stones, Dirk, you dummy. It was The Mamas. The Mamas and the--I can’t remember. But I know there was this one Mama who died tragically.”

“In the plane crash with Ritchie Valens, wasn’t it? Or was she shot as she was going into her apartment at the Dakota?”

“Sperm Donors!” said Bree. “It was The Mamas and The Sperm Donors, I think.”

Dirk stopped the car and threw up his hands. “OK, I give up. Where is it?”

“Not again, Honey?” said Bree.

But it was understandable. It wasn’t senility, it was architectural imperialism. Their complex looked just like every other complex in the Demi Moore Valley.

“Just sit tight,” she said, switching on the dashboard homing computer and keying in the program to get to their unit at Flossmore, A Community.

Dirk lowered the seat backs and snuggled up next to Bree.

“While we’re waiting, can you sing me a little of that song, Bunnynose?”

He hadn’t forgotten his old nickname for her, and she hadn’t forgotten his. “Your request is being processed, Wild Thing.”

She stroked his distinguished head and began to sing:

All the leaves are brown

And your implant is gray

Something, something, something--

If I was in L.A. --

California dreamin’ --

On such a something day. . ..

He kissed her chin, where it was recently pulled tightest, and the efficient little car dinged its start-up noise and headed home.