I think it’s the hearing aid ads cluttering my mailbox that annoy me the most.

The hearing aid cartel must figure I wouldn’t catch what they’re saying if they advertised on TV, but if I tilt my bifocals just right, and they print it in large enough letters, I might be able to see what they’re selling.

What they don’t understand is that I don’t want to hear all the blather going on around me.

Silence is golden — especially if the alternative is listening to all the nonsense being bandied about by young pups who have no clue about life.

That makes me cranky. Cranky makes me angry. Angry makes my blood pressure go up. And when my doctor sees that my blood pressure is soaring again, he adds even more pills to my box — and not necessarily the ones that made those old people in the TV ads so jaunty.

What is it about ads for us old … I mean, seasoned folks?

I used to laugh as seniors hobbled across my TV screen in a mad dash for the bathroom because they forgot their adult diapers or wriggled about the floor because they’d fallen and couldn’t get up or quizzed their doctors about pills of more varieties than of candies in my bag of M&Ms.

I’m no longer laughing. I can’t even indulge in a bag of M&Ms anymore. I’m too busy popping an array of colorful pills designed to counteract the effects of decades of sugar and fries.

And it’s not so much that I can’t get up. I’m poking around for anything else I need to do while I’m down there.

It takes so much effort these days to lower myself to the floor and climb back up that if I fall, I’m taking the opportunity to pick up all of those pens, papers, socks and anything else I’ve dropped since my last fall.

It used to be only my breakfast cereal that went snap, crackle, pop. Now it’s me.

Or, as one great philosopher posted, “The fact that my entire body cracks like a glowstick whenever I move and yet refuses to actually glow is disappointing.”

Another anonymous great philosopher summed it up this way:

“Childhood injuries: Fell off my bike; fell out of a tree; twisted my ankle. Adult injuries: Slept wrong; sat down too long; sneezed too hard.”

Now when I watch TV, I notice the ads are full of people who look like me, only they’re smiling, bouncing, dancing, lifting, bending, swinging and other such impossible frolicking while cheerfully advising me to ask my doctor to add even more pills to my crammed caddy of daily annoyances.

If the commercials aren’t trying to push more pills, they’re reinforcing stereotypes of what a brainless dolt of a dinosaur I must be. You get ads that show new technology that’s so simple that even a grandma can use it.

You bet Grandma can use the new laptop. She’ll use it upside your head, you ungrateful, patronizing…

Oops. There goes my blood pressure again. Deep, cleansing breaths, like the ones they show in those ads for sit-in-the-chair-so-you-don’t-injure-yourself-Grandpa aerobics.

Don’t get me wrong. There are advantages to being of a certain age. People don’t laugh anymore when I fall. They rush over to see if I’ve broken any brittle bones — and to stuff business cards for elder care attorneys in my pockets.

I also enjoy senior discounts. The part I don’t like is that the young punks never ask to see ID to prove that I’m decrepit — I mean, of a certain age.

I try not to let any of this stuff bother me. TV commercials targeting “kids” my age rarely do. It’s because of this advice I saw while scrolling through whatchamacallit, that tech thingy with the screen and clicker gizmo.

“Tips on how to fall asleep in a living room chair: 1 — Be old. 2 — Sit in a chair.”

It may be another targeted ad, but I can testify that it works.

Shh. The geezer’s napping again. Wake him — gently — at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on that Facebook thingamabob.