"I Want to Be Let Alone"

Greta Garbo is associated with the phrase, "I want to be alone" (or "vant" if you're saying it with the accent), but she told a close friend something a little different.

"I don't want to be 'left alone,' I want to be 'let alone.'"

That may seem like a pretty fine distinction, but oh, what difference a letter makes. 

I don't want to be left alone by friends and family, for example (not most of you, anyhow). But I do want to be let alone by those outside my circle.

I say this because I have a big birthday coming up later this year, and I've been flooded with reminders of same. In my mailbox, in my email and yes, even in my Facebook account, I keep getting ads for supplemental insurance. I've also received invitations for a free meal if I sit through an explanation of the screwed-up system that Medicare has become. Every insurance company on the planet, apparently, wants to be my carrier. 

And let's not forget the lovely brochures I've gotten from funeral parlors offering me affordable pre-payment plans.

Enough, all of you. 

The constant reminders of my age and impending decrepitude have begun to feel like a slab of cement pressing down on my chest, slowly crushing the life out of me. Which, if you think about it, is not in the insurance company's best interest. Their best interest being that I will live as long and healthily as possible so they don't have to pay up.

Just how persistent are these vultures, you may well wonder.

We're still getting ads addressed to my father-in-law. And he's been gone for well over 30 years. 

Maybe those smarty-pants don't know everything, after all. 

Photo attribution: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (work for hire), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons