I have seen it coming for quite some time now, but I fear it is now true beyond a doubt. I no longer am in anyone’s demographic group.

I suspect  businesses – and their marketing staff – are missing the boat. Not only are baby boomers still a large portion of the population, but many of us have a certain amount of expendable income since our homes are paid off, we don’t have college loans, our children are financially self-sufficient, and we have time on our hands.

It was the random red couch that really crystalized this notion of being a purchaser without a company interested in selling to me. McDonald’s new ad is a total mystery to me. It involves a series of people sitting on “a random red couch” and eating their Big Macs as a really annoying song plays in the background. As often as I watch these commercials (and I try to fast forward past them as often as possible), they just are totally and completely lost on me. And they don’t make me want to eat a hamburger from McDonalds or anywhere else.

The other commercial that leaves me completely flummoxed is the Sprint ad in which the family members are talking about how a number of people can be on one calling plan. The father is a hamster. Every time I watch this commercial – every single, solitary time – I ask Bill – no, I beg him – to tell me why the father is a hamster. Are there people – maybe people who are twenty-something – who find this comical? Is the hamster a symbol of something that I am missing? Still, it is enough to make me want to change my cell service to whatever service has the commercial featuring that sweet young man talking with the children around the table. I am that demographic, not the demographic with the talking father/hamster. Or is it a gerbil? Am I overthinking it all?

A number of months ago, I touched on this issue as I lamented that Dancing With the Stars was changing its format to try and appeal to a younger demographic. They changed the music and the format and the set to encourage that beloved 25 – 45 demographic group to watch ballroom dancing. I don’t know if they have been successful. What I do know is that Candace Cameron Bure has made it to the finals and she can’t dance a lick. What she can do is appeal to the over-45 demographic because of her strong religious beliefs. So there.

The other day I turned on the radio in the car. The lead story on the local station was that state and local officials had just broken the news to the Colorado Symphony Orchestra – THE COLORADO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA – that they were not going to be able to proceed with their planned BYOC concerts. That is BYOC as in Bring Your Own Cannabis. Yes friends, THE COLORADO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, that distinguished and talented gathering of musicians playing Bach and Mozart and Rachmaninoff, in celebration of Colorado’s liberal marijuana laws, wanted to play music before people who perhaps would rather be at a Bob Marley concert.

I’m sure my parents felt this same way as they grew older as well. Maybe it really is just me struggling to accept that I am no longer a child. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that I am very happy when there is a commercial where one of two things happens: either all members of the family are human or all members of the family are animals.

And McDonalds, can we go back to “two all-beef patties special, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun?”