Old people are “cool”

For me, there was nothing worse than my middle school years.  The years where I was as tall as I am now (5’8″), skinny as I am now (not publishing weight here), but with worse skin and less friends, I choose to banish the middle school to the recesses of my brain with camp memories (I hated camp) and the bar mitzvah circuit. Let’s be clear. I never want to have to wear black puffy-sleeved off-the-shoulder dresses again.

So now I can cross ever moving to a retirement community in Florida off my list.  It’s like reliving the tween years all over again.  Except the people look a little different. I used to think being a new mom was the ”new” middle school. Over a long weekend at a fancy club in Boca I was proven wrong.  I learned quickly that old people can gossip just as well as us youngsters.  Among other things.  A typical lunchtime conversation uncovered many facts about the people in the room.

“See him over there? He says his daughter got pregnant with twins at 50 – without in vitro!”

“See her? Her husband is never sober!”

“See them? They sent around a nasty email about me to everyone in the club.”

Old people really know how to dish.  But more than that, it was amazing to me - this “club” I was privy to - the cliques, the outfits, the in-fighting, the caste system of housing.  (“Ooooh, yooou live in the condos over there near the road?”) I didn’t know that as people age they start resembling their teenage grandkids more than they ought to. 

And the hair and the clothes! I think I saw more hairspray in Florida than I ever did on a parquet wood dance floor in a banquet hall.  Not to mention the black puffy-sleeved off-the-shoulder dresses I saw in action. Even the makeup was a throw back to the eighties. As my step mother-in-law said:

They just can’t see anymore how much makeup they are actually putting on.

My in-laws sure had some good one-liners.

What set the community apart from middle school, however was the food.  The gobs and gobs and gobs of food.  No one ate (this well) in middle school.  Even a former Slim-Fast addict, now a chubby 80-year-old with serious bling could not avoid the chocolate sundae fountain that was on display.

It was like this. Only bigger.

I would be wrong to say that old people just sit around their communities eating and gossiping.  They also go to the movies.  In style. I am now a major movie theater snob.  After sitting on a veritable “couch” watching Juno (fabulous!), only the ”Premier Level” will do.  It does help when you attend the movie at 1:50 pm.  Oh wait, we were in Florida. It was half full at that time.

It pays to get old, I guess, because you can afford the “Premier” seats.

Now that I’m back in the cold of Chicago, though, I realized that Florida really grew on me.  I’m starting to miss the palm trees, the swimming pool, the bad driving and especially the chocolate.  Having a fondue fountain in my kitchen doesn’t exactly have the same appeal as it does in a fancy club dining room.