The kitchen smelled good late this morning as the volunteers prepared roast pork, au gratin potatoes, and mixed veggies for the Senior Lunch. After I finished my aquatic aerobics class in the pool on the other side of the building, I curled up in front of the fire in the Senior Lobby with the latest issue of The New Yorker and dozed until noon. This is what Senior living is supposed to be like!
But then I lost my damn lunch ticket. They issue them at the front desk, and if you lose it they will not issue you another one. I hunted high and low for it, emptying my wallet of postage stamps, receipts, broken toothpicks, and half a Kleenex -- no ticket. I checked all my pockets, pulling out enough lint to fill a quilt. No ticket. Lucky for me I found a spare one on the floor in the Men's Room. So somebody else got shorted a lunch -- not me.
We had a Senior Interpretive Dance Group perform during lunch. I had to admire -- well, come to think of it, I don't have to admire anything about them, do I? I'm not angling for a Pulitzer Prize. If old people want to wiggle their butts in front of others, that's okay by me -- but don't expect me to stop shoveling peas in my mouth just to applaud.
I got trapped at a table with six grandmothers, who all had to talk about their darling grand kids.
"Oh, Daryl just got back from his mission to Taiwan. Now he's up at BYU studying linguistics."
"Well, Joan had twins y'know and now her husband just got laid off and they're thinking of moving back in with their parents but that won't work because they voted for Hilary. I'd let them live with me but I just sublet the condo in Hawaii."
"I don't know what's gotten into that boy -- he's only fifteen but he already drives a motorcycle out to California to see his girlfriend. I think kids today grow up too fast."
"And they don't know the value of a dollar. My little Bobby thinks he can ask me for a quarter every time he sees me! The last time I gave him a Kennedy half dollar and he tried to swallow it!"
As I finished my mandarin oranges I began dreaming of standing up to all these old biddies and yelling at the top of my lungs: "Shut up about your grand children!" But then I realized that if they didn't talk about their grand kids they would probably talk about their hemorrhoid operation or something equally as grisly. So I just went back to watching the Senior Interpretive Dancers and wondering how to get an article published in the New Yorker. The stuff they print nowadays is crap, so it should be easy for me to get in there.
No comments:
Post a Comment