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Archives for June 2023

Buzzzz

June 23, 2023 By admin

Senior man looking in mirrorIn a recent BuzzFeed post, people shared their “Oh no, I’m old” moments and the results, as you would expect, were very hilarious/revealing/depressing. The worst one was the 42-year-old man who broke his hip in his sleep. Then he broke it again while doing the PT to heal and had to get  hip replacement surgery. If you’re age 70 and over, allow me to remind you he is only 42.

My age realization is when you are filling out personal information online and get to the drop-down menu for the year you were born. Watching the years fly by as you scroll ever deeper down in order to reach your birth year is discouraging.

Another 42-year-old stated that he knew he was old when he watched a music award show and had no idea who any of the nominees were. Dua Lipa had him stumped but I’ve seen photos of her on Instagram and I would say if you’ve seen only one photo of her in concert, you would not forget the name.

One poster vividly remembered Y2K. Then he realized that the year 2000 was closer to the year 1979 than 2023. I remember that many normally intelligent people thought the world as we knew it was going to end. Not.

Someone posted that he AND his father have noticed that they recognize more of the celebrities who died than the ones currently on the red carpet.

Then there was someone who admitted that they had a long and interesting conversation with someone in the grocery store – about mops. Probably not embarrassed about it either.

An obstetric nurse realized she helped to deliver one of her co-workers. That’s almost as bad as overhearing the person in line in front of you give their birthdate as 2006.

One contributor shared that he has thrown out his back getting something out of the refrigerator. And emptying the dishwasher. And sneezing. And removing the dog’s leash.

The topper would have to be the poster who said he went to his high school reunion and was gobsmacked that there were a whole bunch of old people there.

That’s a feeling that any of us can get when we’re in an airport gate waiting area or a doctors office waiting room. Guess we better get used to it and maybe take a long look in the mirror.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. You can also visit his author page here. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

Filed Under: ESSAY

Artisano

June 23, 2023 By admin

paint brushesA few weeks ago, I got wind of an art exhibition for veterans in my county. I debated whether to apply, partly because I’m not sure critics would view my stuff as “real art.” Anyway, I did apply for the exhibit, which is in May. They accepted me, but then I was miserable for a month worrying and fretting about how others might react to my embellished wood scraps.

I tried to tell myself, do the thing that scares you and all that, but life is already pretty scary, and I don’t need to pile it on. It’s not a popular sentiment, but these days I’m all about making things easier. I fought the good fight and made it to retirement. I used to think big deal. Now, I think, hell yeah, big deal.

Retirement, they say, comes in phases. I’m in the easygoing phase and am doing my best to bypass the harder-than-it has-to-be-phase.

Although I rarely quit anything, I mean, do it until it hurts, I withdrew from the exhibit and feel great about the decision. Art is just a thing I do, no more, no less. I enjoy sharing it with you, but I don’t need to beat the streets seeking new audiences.

number 36

 

 

Number 36

I was working on Number 36 whilst churning through all this, and I was so grumpy, trying to make it better. Normally, my mantra, is hey, it was just a piece of scrap wood, now it’s something else. So what if it’s not perfect? But thinking about judges and shit messed me up. I simply need to hang out in my garage and do what speaks to me.

So, number 36. What can I say? I love cats.

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

 

 

Filed Under: ESSAY

Demarcation

June 23, 2023 By admin

crosswalk linesSixty-nine years old is a line of demarcation for me. In 1999, my mother, a widow, was sixty-nine years old when she eloped and moved from Western Massachusetts to Cape Cod with her new husband Ted, himself a widower. A new life with this new start.

My mother began her day, at dawn, with a 1.4 mile walk from her house on Paddocks Path to the Sesuit Harbor Café where she sat and watched the boats in the harbor before returning to her home. Then she showered and dressed and…

“Erline, Volunteer” Read the badge on the ID lanyard she wore around her neck, most weekdays, at the Dennis Senior Center. “I help serve lunch to the old people,” she told me when she spoke of this job she began very soon after she had moved. Continuing to volunteer all through her 70s and 80s, though her clients were elderly, she never grew old.

On the cul-de-sac that formed their neighborhood, there were only three houses, including theirs. In the other homes were: John and June. Michael and Ellie. “Your mother fits right in,”Ellie told me when I joined them at one of their dinner parties. “It’s like she’s always lived here.” At the Our Lady-The Cape Thrift Shop, Mom donated many items that she found in the large barn attached to her house. On weekends, bringing coffee and sandwiches, she’d sit and visit with the church volunteers who worked in the store.

“I had at least ten, fifteen good years,” she said when, years later, we spoke of that time.

When I think of how my mother, at sixty-nine, was still young enough, vital enough, healthy enough to not only embark on a new adventure, but to flourish, it spurs me on. Yet didn’t I return to school, and being older than all of my professors, earn a Masters in English at the age of fifty-two? And didn’t I, after my retirement, begin, at the age of sixty-two, an intense study of French, with, again, all of my teachers being younger than me? Je parle Français maintenant. Perhaps…like mother, like daughter…

In November, for almost two weeks, my husband and I will be in Old Québec City, where, I will speak only French. And, during that time, I will celebrate my birthday, mon anniversaire. I will be turning sixty-nine years old.

Barbara A. Rouillard is a retired special education teacher and is currently at work on a book-length memoir entitled I Laugh Because I Do Not Want to Cry.

Filed Under: ESSAY

Show Them The Money

June 2, 2023 By admin

Rain of dollars falling from the sky.How many times have you read that a large percentage of baby boomers (as in more than 20 per cent) have exactly zero savings for retirement? I know I’ve seen that figure quoted in numerous articles. So, it may come as a surprise that, according to Fortune magazine, the average boomer has a worth of $1.2 million! That means a large chunk, perhaps 80 per cent of boomers, have been socking away the savings for retirement and to pass along to their offspring.

What’s going to happen to most of that dough? Good news for millennials…they are looking at a $68 trillion windfall by the year 2030. Some are calling it the greatest wealth transfer of modern times. Their current worth averages only $100,000. Millennials will end up being five times wealthier than they are today.

Sadly, much of the inherited wealth will end up in the hands of millennials who are relatively well-off. If you’re a struggling millennial, it’s likely that your boomer parents have struggled as well. The parents may run out of savings and be counting on their children for help, in which case there is no wealth transfer, but rather it may become a wealth drain for millennials.

Try to imagine you’re a millennial who has been through two recessions in your lifetime and grappled with trying to save for a home purchase, college expense for your children, and a retirement fund. Then you inherit a piece of that $68 trillion and your fortune(s) literally changes overnight. Experts warn that failure to fix the Social Security Trust fund before 2033 could put a major damper on this wealth transfer, so even millennials with well-off parents might be wise to not rely on a big payday falling into their laps.

What effect will this wealth transfer have on the lucky recipients? Will it change their outlook on life? Alter their ideals? No one knows or can predict the outcome. We boomers may not live long enough to see how it all turns out. Just one more outcome that’s beyond our grasp. Too bad. I just hate not knowing how the movie ends.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. You can also visit his author page here. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

Filed Under: ESSAY

Mother Calling?

June 2, 2023 By admin

megaphoneWhen you were a kid did you ever do the thing, “I think I hear my mother calling”? It was a useful gambit when some bullies were threatening or a neighbor asked for help weeding her garden or a girl gave me the fish eye after a perfectly good joke. Well, I discovered a variation on the theme, the other day, when a guy at the retirement home tried downloading his sad family story. At first, I was polite and he took it as interest (or maybe he didn’t really care if I was interested…just needed to ventilate) as he recounted the sibling rivalry with a sister four states away. We all need to listen to others as we would have them listen unto us. So, I listened. Then he got onto his mother and then his brother. By then I had stopped nodding and ‘uh-huhing.’ I mean, there are professional people who get paid to listen to these kinds of tales-of-woe.

Look, I’m a professional photographer. I can watch people on the beach aiming their cell phones at egrets and shells and splash-diving pelicans. Everyone thinks they’re a photographer with unlimited digital exposures at their disposal. Timing, selectivity is called for. Same with telling jokes…but I digress.

So, how to curtail my fellow resident’s screed? I couldn’t claim to hear my mother calling. I’m not a licensed psychic. Just then my cell phone buzzed in my hearing aid. An update from my bank. I got an idea. I put my hand to my ear and nodded, saying, “Okay, dear, sure.”

I looked at my old-newscaster and said, “It’s my daughter. My granddaughter wants to talk to me.”

The guy nodded and walked away, calling “to be continued,’ over his shoulder. Not if I can help it, I thought, as long as I got my cell phone ‘calling’ me when I need it.

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. In, Pinata Belly, and other tales of later love, Novara reminds of the limits and ultimate hope for online dating sites.

Filed Under: ESSAY

Play Ball!

June 2, 2023 By admin

softball in gloveIt’s a warm and humid summer afternoon and they have the field to themselves. The mother is short and trending toward curves and folds, but still close enough to her softball prime to have a strong arm, and she does a little O-yah, arm-pumping victory shuffle around the mound when she slips a good one past her swing-away daughter. The daughter, tall and lanky, all straight lines and right angles, returns the favor when she drills one of her mother’s pitches up the crease into deep right-center, or lofts a big, floating, full-moon of a shot over the left field fence.

After a while, they switch places, the mom squatting on a blue pickle bucket behind home plate, digging her wind-milling daughter’s pitches out of the dust, or rising liking a hummingbird to spear a high, hard one out of the air and whipping it back to the mound in one fluid motion. All afternoon it goes like this – the chittering back and forth banter, twang of the metal bat, smack of ball into mitt, teasing and lilting sounds of laughter – while the shadows move slowly over the fresh-cut grass, the sounds lingering in the cool evening air like love songs.

Scott Peterson is a retired educator from Kalamazoo, MI. His poems and essays have appeared in Longridge Review, Encore Magazine, Plain song Review and other places.

Filed Under: FICTION

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