Anybody else feel as if you’ve been standing on your head lately? Anyone thinking it’s becoming a topsy-turvy world? After a recent trip to pick up a new prescription, I’ve begun to doubt my place on the planet.

I am proud to have successfully conquered “Press and Turn,” even though it’s usually written in raised white letters on a white surface, but now I’m being challenged by pharmacies and cosmetic manufacturers to learn another new trick. While older citizens in recent years have taken on computers, digital cameras, cell phones and self-loading boarding passes, I think the latest widgets may just possibly finish me off.

This is going to be hard to explain without a diagram, so bear with me. The initial idea was excellent: a colored ring topping a pill-bottle to identify either the person or the medication. For example, my blood pressure medicine has a red top and the cat’s thyroid medicine has a purple top (I know, but he asked for it). Now engage your spatial vision. You see, the bottle has a rounded bottom upon which it cannot be set. So once you take off the top, you can’t put the bottle down until you screw the top back on and turn the bottle over (it sits on its cap).  How clever. How smart. How infuriating.

I said a few bad words wrestling that bottle but I lived with it. Then I bought a new lipstick. Great, I thought, there’s a nice, colored section on top so I can tell if I’ve grabbed pink or Marilyn Monroe red. This is a great asset when you can no longer read the lipstick label without a magnifying glass. Then I discovered the part containing the actual lipstick is round. I can’t set it down without putting the top back on and upending the tube. Suppose I had wanted to set it down and later apply more lipstick, or write a note on the mirror?  You know, “I’ve had it and I’m going to Nome, Alaska!”  I tried putting the stick on its side but it just rolled around and scribbled M&M Red all over my bathroom counter.

See what I mean? Maybe these things were designed for people in Australia. I suppose I could dig through the Earth until I got to the soles of their feet and hand over my upside down pill-bottles and lipsticks.

And I’ve been thinking lately that marketing to us older folks is upside down, too. Listen to the radio, for example. My friends don’t have shaky voices, but every time advertisers want to indicate an older person on the radio, they resort to this old cliché. And what about those television commercials feature bun-headed grannies in rocking chairs and old geezers in flannel shirts? Most of my friends and colleagues (yes, we still have colleagues in our seventies and eighties) are active, up-to-date, participating, contributing members of the community. I haven’t seen one of them rocking, unless it’s with a new grandbaby. Mostly they’re sending e-mails or text messaging or heading for the next volunteer project or French class.

Or working. If we’re going to be able to afford all these new doodads, many of us will have to keep working, at least part-time. Maybe the advertisers should be trying to persuade the companies they market for to employ more older workers, to retrain us, to offer flexible hours and schedules, and maybe, just once in a while, ask us what we think of their new product ideas. After all, the older population now equals that of five-year-olds in this country. And you know they can open anything….