Archives for October 2019

According to recent research by the National Restaurant Association, boomers are beginning to “age out” of the restaurant market.

Since when do baby boomers “age out” of things? How did that become a thing? Aging out. We’re too old to eat outside of our homes? I call bullshit on this one. Supposedly, there are fewer boomer patrons due to mobility issues, unwillingness to drive after dark and the availability of dining options within senior living communities. I will accept that these factors might limit a small percentage of the boomer population, especially if you bear in mind that the oldest boomers (born in 1947) would be 72 years of age now.

In any case, restaurant operators are setting their sights on younger patrons. So rather than staking a claim on our barrels of money, they would rather focus on younger patrons with less expendable income. They predict a slow and steady decline in boomer dollars (which apparently will parallel our own slow and steady physical decline?). So it’s all about Generation Z now. You know them. They were born after the year 2000 and cannot spell or write.

Okay fine. So while restaurants are infatuated with Gen Z, the research suggests that boomers have shifted their dining dollars to take-out and delivery. Too feeble to make the scene anymore, our dining choices will be limited to what a teenager can bring to the door.

I don’t like where this is going. Are restaurants just in the vanguard of a movement to keep boomers at home where they can receive all their goods and services when the doorbell rings?

How about we fight back against this restaurant trend by taking a bunch of Generation Z kids out to dinner a few nights a week? Everybody wins. The restaurants get our dollars, the Gen Z kids get a meal they could not afford, and they can show us how to reboot our iPhones. And don’t forget — they don’t mind driving at night!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

 

Moving – gathering all your possessions, deciding which ones you really still need and relocating them and yourself to a new home – does strange things to a person. Especially a person in the – shall we say – post-youthful years. It makes you work harder than you thought you could, and it makes you spend an inordinate amount of time looking for stuff. Where did I stash that favorite jacket of mine? The book I was reading? The notes for the book I’m writing? The little rug I wanted for the bathroom? That’s not even the half of it, but you get the idea.

It also makes a deep cut into your energy level. In the midst of the move I’m currently struggling with, I decided to take an eight-week course in how to avoid falls. Why now? Well, it was available and I was, frankly, not thinking too straight at the moment I made the decision. I mention this only to tell you a small anecdote: I was so sleepy during the first class that I nodded off and almost fell out of my chair. The forward motion alerted me and just barely prevented my becoming an object lesson. And a little embarrassed.

Another result of the effort of moving: It has stalled my writing career big time. I’m now more interested in the location of a chair in the living room than in the placement of a comma. Fortunately I believe in the Navajo rug theory applied to writing: Everything has a mistake in it because nothing is perfect. This won’t carry me through a 400-word piece, and certainly will not comfort me for the length of an entire book, but it will help a little. A Navajo weaver might deliberately weave an error into her rug. In my case, I just let one of my mistakes go. And there’s always at least one that all editorial eyes have missed so it’s easy enough to make my manuscript not perfect.

But back to moving. Is there anything good in it? Absolutely. Now that I’m pretty well settled I can honestly say that, in the end, I feel stronger – both physically and mentally – than I did before I started. I can carry more books in my arms and stay awake longer. My sore hip has almost entirely disappeared. And it seems that I can think more clearly. Also more slowly, but in the end more clearly. And – get this – I lost five pounds.

Norma Libman is a journalist and lecturer who has been collecting women’s stories for more than twenty years. You can read the first chapter of her award-winning book, Lonely River Village, at NormaLibman.com.

The same week I got a disastrous haircut – almost a pixie cut with ridiculously short bangs – I was scheduled for a trip to my home state of Rhode Island for a reunion with my siblings. The irony wasn’t lost on me – my 65 year old self with hair shorn like my ten year old self (and I hated it then too), setting off to revisit the joys of childhood.

The first three of us were born between 1949 and 1953, and I was third after a sister and a brother. That got me off the hook in many ways, and allowed me to be a non-conformist throughout childhood and adolescence. The fourth sibling, our adored baby brother, came along in 1961. We are scattered like wind-blown seeds now, and our annual gathering is meant to reforge our bond. But we are opinionated, judgmental people who think we know best and most on every subject from brewing tea to family history. I steel myself each year for the ghosts of childhood our reunion stirs up -the prodding of old grievances, the reminders of each other’s weaknesses, the insistence on remaining in prescribed roles. But there are also memories of silly songs we made up on long car trips, our mother’s delicious oatmeal cookies and bland dinner casseroles, the stories our parents told us, and the things we got away with.

This year, being in Rhode Island, we had to visit second beach in Newport, where we once stood on our dad’s shoulders and jumped into the salty brine, and bodysurfed in the waves from the time we were small. We stopped on the way back to our rental house to lunch on clam cakes and New England clam chowder. Both failed to meet the expectations our memories stirred up. Same with our trip to the Newport Creamery the next day, for Awful Awfuls (a milkshake that was overly sweet) and Butter Brickle ice cream (freezer burned). We also bought some coffee milk, a staple of our childhood, and Dell’s frozen lemonade, both of which are now too sweet.

It’s true you can’t go home again to the sweet treats of childhood, but you can smell the salty sea air, feel the breeze, listen to the accents of the locals we used to live among, and tolerate, even love, each other for a few days during yet another year on earth.

Lee Stevens is from Hendersonville, NC

 

 

Let’s face it. Or not. Boomers are jonesing for plastic surgery procedures that will turn back the clock. The over 55 demo is seeking liposuction, botox and fillers that will make them look younger. What’s driving the big increase? Besides just wanting to look younger, this group also has a high divorce rate and that means they are back in the dating pool. Bad online dating site photos can kill a boomer’s chances right out of the gate.

Facelifts (rhytidectomy) top the list and last year boomers accounted for two-thirds of them. And half of all eyelid surgeries. The facelift fixes sagging skin, deep fold lines, jowls, and those turkey neck things that can really kill the buzz. Plan to spend north of $7K if you’re in the market for this fix.

Liposuction removes fat and contours what’s left behind. Throw a tummy tuck in there and you’re looking at a $3,500 and up price tag.

Hair transplants can remedy thinning mats and bald spots for men who want to get back that Woodstock look they’ve been missing. The cost varies with how much acreage you need to repair.

Breast augmentation is still popular and involves implants or fat transfer. That will run somewhere over $4K.

Finally, botox and fillers help to correct crow’s feet and forehead lines for as little as $400 bucks.

Add in a gym membership, loads of vitamins and health supplements, and a sporty car and you’ll be all set to start dating again.

Is it really worth it? I guess that depends upon how unhappy you are about your physical appearance and how motivated you are to seek out rewarding companionship. Anything that makes you feel more happy about your self-image can’t be all bad. We look in the mirror every morning and every night (and some of us look even more times than that) so if what you see makes you unhappy, maybe it’s time to invest in your physical and mental well-being.

Or you could just buy a Kindle and a Netflix streaming account and not leave home anymore. Life is harsh.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

I have some nice jewelry – not diamonds or gold – mostly unique silver pieces from when we lived in Egypt and silver, turquoise, coral and sugilite from the American southwest. I viewed them as wear-to-work or out-for-dinner, and I’m not doing much of either these days. My retirement wardrobe is functional and not particularly stylish.

For some reason, I worry about what happens to our stuff when we die. We have wills and all that, but there’s this weird dark side of me that considered selling everything little by little, so that by the time we die, all the good stuff will be gone. My dad used to sell our toys if we took a bathroom break, so I’m thinking this may be another oddity from the gene pool.

So, yes, I thought about selling my jewelry, among other household items, but silver isn’t all that valuable and I don’t really want to part with the stones. As they say, you can’t take it with you. I’ve decided to start wearing it, possibly even adopting the look of a crazy lady who wears all her jewelry at once. By the way, this does align with my vision of pretending I am a Bohemian heiress who spends her later years dabbling in what amuses her.

I’ve always leaned minimalist, and it was not hard to follow Coco Chanel’s advice about removing one piece before you leave the house. Why not add one piece before leaving the house? Or two? I’ve also decided items I reserved for special occasions can now come out to play. Kind of like using your good china, because it’s just sitting there otherwise.

My silver concho belt with a rash guard and denim shorts? Birkenstocks? Why not? I shined up the belt and wore it to the grocery store. We were walking down the aisle, and Dale said, “That belt looks beautiful.” Wow, so that was worth it, right?

The bad news is I need to polish up the rest of my silver, but I’m excited about wearing some pieces that have been tucked away for quite a while. And wondering how I am going to mix it up … unusual combinations I hadn’t previously considered.

I’m also thinking about new ways to wear some of the work clothes I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of. And, oh, those cowboy boots from Texas.

If we do it right, retirement can be all about freedom. Maybe with aging, we lose the fear of being judged. Wear what you want, think what you want, say what you want, do what you want.

Just live your life. Wear the jewelry, use the good china.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

 

I could see the backs of the elderly couple in the Burger King booth. Side by side, they plowed into huge burgers and supersized fries. The man wore jeans, his shoulders not quite fleshing out the grampa-plaid flannel shirt. The woman had cocker spaniel-curled, blue-tinted hair due for a perm. More power to them, I thought, helping the economy by eating out.

The next time I looked up, I caught the man’s shoulders jerking and woman’s head bobbing. They were laughing. Imagine. What’s there to laugh about like teenagers on a date when you’re in your 80s.

So, on my way out, I stopped at their table. “Hey, I just wanted to tell you that I hope my wife and I are able to laugh together when we’re your age…or even have any jokes that we haven’t already laughed to death.”

The woman looked up, spoke for both, “Oh, we’re not married. His wife is gone. So is my husband. We just know each other from way back. Why my mother taught him to play piano. And I live on 118^th street and he lives on a farm. And how old do you think we are, anyhow?”

I had to step back a bit and reassess. She had obviously sized up my turkey wattle and thin gray hair. The look she flashed me made me pause. Like, I was someone she wouldn’t mind asking her out for a cherry Coke. Now I was embarrassed. I was certainly a lot closer in age to them than to anyone else in the place. And I suddenly realized that I was just a couple of rapidly accelerating years away from their age.

I decided to humor them by underestimating the old timers a bit and said, “80.”

“Well, I’m 82, and he’s 84,” she replied with chin firmly squared and lips tight. Ouch. They were a lot closer to my age than I guessed. The guy canted his head and held my eye with his clear baby-blues as if to say, what makes you think you’re so young and invulnerable that you can patronize us. Give yourself a couple of years, buddy and you’ll be glad to have someone to share a joke and a burger. Now quit crashing my date.

I smiled—more like grimaced—and took my leave; chastened about how slowly it takes for our self-image to catch up with our real age.

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara and his wife live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/