Life Stories, Laughter and Old Ladies

I don’t do a lot of talking around here. Mostly I listen and occasionally I throw in a comment here or there. The other day it dawned on me that I’ve heard all the details of marriages, education, children and grandchildren, travels, and what others consider to their biggest achievements in life but they know very little about me. My life path is so unconventional compared to theirs I wouldn’t know how to explain the fact that, for example, my husband and I were a couple for 42 years but we didn’t get married until after his stroke. We didn’t live together either except as my husband would say to anyone who'd ask if we were married, “Only on the weekends.” We lived a mile apart and spent more time together than most married coupled we knew. And we certainly talked more than other couples we knew.  

People who knew us would agree that our businesses didn't mesh well. I had a wedding floral business in my house (always neat and orderly) and Don was trying hard to be a hoarder in his as well as run a parking lot maintenance business. The only reason we started selling in antique malls was in an effort to prune the quantity of stuff he had. It turned out to be one of worst ideas in my life because it just gave Don an excuse to buy more stuff. At one point in time we had booths in four malls and were vendors at two Gas and Oil Collector's Conventions/Swaps Meets in the summers. I did all the pricing, inventory and booth servicing while he did all the procuring, carrying heavy stuff and researching the history and prices of the things we sold.

What would people around here take away from that story, if I tried to explain our unique relationship? I'd get a few sentences into telling it and someone would interrupt with a question and they'd only hear the "hoarder" and "not married" part and those words can't possibly paint a true picture. I don't lie but I never offer the raw truth either. If asked I'll say "we were together for 42 years" and change the topic. Ya, we had a wedding I could describe---at the court house with our brothers and sister-in-laws present, a reception at a steakhouse near by with the six of us and we "honeymooned" at a mega-theater across the street. Whoop dee doo.

Recently at lunch the contrast in my life experiences and others here at the continuum care complex came front and center when a woman was asking how she was going to carry a bottle of water with her newly acquired cane and I jokingly said, “You could get one of those hats that have the beer can holders and plastic straws for hand-free drinking.” And several ladies at the table thought I was making that up, that it wasn’t something already on the market. One woman said, "You have quite the imagination" to which I replied, astonished! “You've never seen them at sports events or music festivals?” Finally a woman said she'd seen them and that's what it took for the others to believe I wasn't weaving a tale for their amusement. I said, “See, that’s why you need a blue collar person around like me, to expand your world.” They all laughed, of course, because that’s my self-appointed job here is to make people laugh. Every so often, like with this conversation, I'm surprised by something I though was common knowledge that I know and others don't. Of course, it works the other way around, too, especially when they start talking about world travel. 

Unfortunately my senior years are making me funny when I don’t intend to be. Like at mahjong last week I said, “The filter in my brain is not working well today. I keep wanting to swear and I’ve had to bit my EAR several times to stop myself.” We all laughed so hard at my expense that I’m quite sure a few ladies peed their pants. I couldn't tell them but I can tell you guys that I had been working on the post about making a sow's ear into a silk purse that morning and I had pig ears on the brain. Not that that's an excuse for word search issues in the elderly but the older I get the more it's going to happen so I might as well make the best of it when it happens. 

Speaking of biting your TONGUE to keep from saying stuff, we recently had a discussion about the saying, "you guys" instead of "you ladies" and how much it offends them. It came up because a waitress said, "How are you guys doing over here?" and one of the ladies at the table wrote a comment card complaining about it. Out of the six of us only two of us didn't mind being addressed that way and I was the only one who admitted to saying it all the time. Oops, my blue collar was showing again. 

I wish I'd had my Kindle with me at the time because after that dinner I consulted my device and sure enough, the fifth definition listed for the noun 'guy' was "persons of either sex; people." I would no more think to write a complaint about a waitress saying "you guys" than I would pee on a pancake and send it back to the kitchen for tasting weird. Word usage change over time. Case in point: using the word 'gay' in today's world means being sexually attracted to someone of the same sex but during Victorian times it meant you were "bright and pleasant and promoting good cheer." And with that bit of who-the-hell-cares trivia I end this post. ©

Old Women Having Fun

 

It’s easier to write when I’m all fired up mad or annoyed by something than when I’m mellowed out due to having a good time at one of the ‘laugh fests’ we have around the continuum care complex. Laugh fests can happen over the silliest things and silly things do not translate easily to the written word---at least at my keyboard. Like last night at dinner in the fine dining restaurant when I got seated with three others I know well but rarely get paired up with by the hostess. And maybe that’s because we tend to laugh a lot which grabs everyone’s attention as opposed to when conversations are strained because I’m at a table with Ms. Manners and her canary soft voice that barely makes it across that table.

Last night we ran through the usual opening question of “What did you do today” and as a reply one of the ladies was telling about how tired she was from working on a cottage that she’s putting up for sale soon and she said, “When I finally crawled into bed I yelled out “Yes! Yes! Yes! Then I worried that my neighbors heard me through the wall and they’d think I was you-know-whating.” 

“You know whating?” Lady Two asked with a confused look on her face and Lady Three answered, “Having sex, dear.” Ladies Two’s confusion slowly got replaced with a huge grin, “That’s what we used to say, isn’t it. It’s been twenty-five years.” “And we can gather you haven’t seen a x-rated movie or porn in twenty-five years either?” I added to the conversation. Lady One burst out laughing and said, “Fifteen years for me" and Lady Three shared, “Ten for me. I might be 93 but I used to have fun!” By then I was laughing so hard I was afraid I’d fall off my chair. For the rest of the night one or the other of us would say, “Yes! Yes, yes!” and we’d all burst out laugh. “Oh, this pork roast is really good,” and a chorus of ‘yeses’ answered. “Are you having dessert? “Yes, yes, yes!” “Are you going to the movie after dinner?” “Yes, yes, yes!” That’s a laugh fest at its finest.

Another night, another dinner and eight of us were around a table each taking a turn at trying to get the top on a take-out container that looked like it would fit but didn’t. I got up to get myself a cup of coffee and as usual they didn’t have the right size tops to fit the cups and I came back to the table complaining about that. “We have free coffee now but we can’t carry it anywhere because the tops never fit.” Someone else piped in with, “that’s because they buy them from the same company where they buy the take-out containers.” I kid you not these two things have been on-going problems here---not life threatening but mildly annoying and that night this issue turned into a comedy act.

If you manage to get the tops on a take-out box then when you go to take it back off it’s like trying to break into an cast-iron safe. One time I thought I’d end up in Urgent Care trying to pry one open with every conceivable tool in my kitchen drawer. Another woman ended up with the food on the floor. We swapped so many stories and laughs so hard around that table about miss-matched lids that the cafe’ manager came out and took all the coffee lids off the rack. And of course whenever the topic of coffee comes up the woman who single-handedly talked our CEO into making the coffee available all day long and for free has to re-tell the story. Big game hunters bragging couldn’t story-tell that accomplishment any better. 

Also this week at a social hour outside on our piazza the guys got started on a topic that had all us ladies scratching our heads when Guy One says, “I couldn’t decide between having pie tonight or having an affair behind my wife’s back.” Did I hear that right? Yes, I did. And Wife One was sitting right beside him and heard it too. Then Guy Two stepped into that pile of dung and said, “I’d always pick an affair over dessert.” There were 8-10 of us ladies around our outdoor fire pit and someone said, “We all know who to stay away from now on, don’t we, ladies.” And one of the women from my dinner table the night before yells out: “Yes, yes, yes!” I still don’t get in what universe a guy gets to pick between pie or an affair but three times this week my belly actually hurt from laughing too. So I knew I had to try to write about these little episodes that happen routinely around here at the CCC. I've written---probably too often---about the gossip train that goes through this place so hopefully this post gives a proper balance to what life is like around this place. ©