Boomer in Retirement Community. What a Trip, Man!

Read a funny page in "Time" by Joel Stein about moving into a retirement community. He is afraid it will be full of all the pot-smoking baby boomers he can't stand NOW, why would he want to see tie-dyed tees every day?

Funny how those in their 50s see retirement communities. I LIVE in one and I've got the inside scoop. We had a pin-wearing hippie couple here, unmarried of course and just like in real life (yep, real life ha-ha) they were on the outs. But, Stein's idea that Lawrence Welk music is playing in the halls here is just silly. The people here average age 85 and are into CURRENT EVENTS. They want to discuss current issues that they are unaware of and "The Big Bang Theory" is a fave TV show with my table mate who is in his late 80s. (A fave of mine too.)

What I found to be the most influential factor is status, just like in school. What college did you attend? How can you make me look important? Do you have money? Same stuff that forms cliches in real life. What Stein dismisses is health issues. THAT is what bonds us together. If we could live on our own, we all would. Live in our own homes, that is a common conversation---what it used to be like in our homes before we came here. (Hint: BETTER)

That is true for me too, but it was made NOT better because of my illness. A healthy person who is 100 will chose their own house any day over a gated retirement community. Unless they are lonely, depressed, and that is a form of illness, isn't it? Well, if you think living around your peers is the answer, maybe, but only maybe. Not every peer is a friend in the waiting. And the truly wealthy stay at home with hired 24/7 care, just as many poor do, but the 24/7 care is family. (Who often get all of that social security check. Will we ever go back to actually living with our sick and/or aging family members just because it is the right thing to do? Nah.)

My next book, after the one I'm working on, will have to tell my story of life here, now, so young, only 55---not what I expected and yet, foolish of me to think otherwise. The drama, the mental games, the class captains and clowns, same stuff from school. Falling in love like a 16 year old, sneaking kisses on elevators, drinking, and baking pot brownies---they do it all.

I have always liked the greatest generation; my own generation---not so much, so I am not looking forward to the baby boomer arrivals except that our food menu will improve greatly. Most will be living until they die in their own homes. "Retirement Communities" will be a thing of the past. Without a cure for my MS, I will probably be in a nursing home by then. Nursing homes will still be around. Ugh.

This greatest generation knew what it was like to come out on the other side. They benefited from the housing boom. They survived the daily threat of being bombed HERE in the U.S.A.
And, of course, they survived us, their kids. Somehow that makes them know the importance of laughter and fun. This has made me look at my own great-aunt Vi in a different light.

She always called herself, "A gray-haired old maid." But, she was only 55 when I was 5. And that day that meant so much to me, when she played tennis with me in the snow---she was only 63. We FORCED her to stop driving before she was 70!! It seemed the right thing to do since she had eye surgery. But she complained up to the last time I spoke with her that she never should have stopped. And now I agree! Well, not in her 70s.

If 50 is the new 30 it is because of how WE saw our elders. Aunt Vi just keeps teaching me lessons, year after year.