Senior Classes, Scams and Reading Addictions

I signed up to go to two, free back-to-back classes at the senior hall with lunch in between. I should have known when the company sponsoring the seminar is giving you a free lunch there will be a significant sales pitch involved. Still, the two topics were interesting---just not exactly what I expected. The morning class was all about scams, schemes and swindles and how to protect yourself against them and it all boils down to not being gullible---my word, not theirs. Apparently, there are still people out there who believe they can win lotteries they didn’t enter overseas or they trust that people who send them checks for hundreds more than something they are selling on Craig’s List made an ‘honest mistake’ and you can just go ahead, cash their (phony) check and make it right by refunding them the difference. And apparently, there are still people who will fall for the phone scam about grandsons needing get-out-of-jail-money or that your computer is being taken over by a virus but never fear, the guy on the phone can help you stop it. I didn’t learn about any scams I didn’t already know about, but on the other hand it’s a good idea to be reminded of them from time to time because who knows when your brain cells will get wiped out by a meteor shower. 

The afternoon session was all about the services of a company that was new to me but has been around our town for thirteen years, a group of eighteen---all women---CPAs and Daily Money Managers for seniors. It’s for people who are struggling with keeping up with mail, bill paying, filing receipts, budgeting, doing income taxes or who are trying to sort out their medical bills and their insurance issues. They’ll do everything but sign your checks which they are not authorized to do---it’s not a conservatorship---nor will they teach you about investing, which is what I thought the lecture was going to be about. My mistake, I didn’t read the class description carefully enough. I did, however, pick up a good resource for researching the background and experience of financial brokers, advisers and firms---BrokerCheck.org. It was on a handout they gave us and that handout was worth my time spent at these classes. Assuming, of course, that when I need those resources links I’ll still know where I filed the handout and I’ll remember how to use a computer. Those meteor showers can melt the marbles in your head if you're not wearing your tinfold hat.

One interesting fact about this group is that they are funded by a senior millage, one I voted for and they charge on a sliding scale from $3.00 to $48.00 an hour. Boo hoo, guess which end of the scale I fall in. The average person who uses the service has two, two hour house calls per month. I do not need a service like this but it’s nice to know it exists. And if you are poor and lonely it would be worth $12.00 a month just to get four hours’ worth of company. For me, at the rate of $48 times four ($192) I’d rather hire someone to take me out for a nice steak, a bottle of wine and a movie. And it bums me out that I’d be essentially paying twice if I use this service---in my county taxes to supplement their other clients and then again by check for myself. Still, I can see how a service like this can keep you living longer in your own home. When you’re old and alone in the world, if you keep forgetting to pay your utilities social services steps in and bing-bam-boom you're shipped off to a nursing home via way of a court order. (That's not a joke like meteor showers and tinfold hats, in case you're wondering.)

Change of topic: Reading has become my excuse for not doing stuff I should be doing now that summer is here. If it was a drug I should be in rehab to rid myself of the gotta-read-monkey on my back. If I’ve got a book or the Kindle in my hand, I can’t do exercise I desperately need to be doing nor can I deep clean my closet, prepare things to take to the auction house or organize a garage sale. In the past month I’ve read The President is Missing; The Handmaid’s Tale, The Woman who Smashed Codes; Murder, Curlers and Cream; The Good Widow; Born a Crime; and I just started reading two books at once: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry for book club and the Luckiest Girl Alive just because the title called me over to the book rack at the grocery store like a drug pusher promising me a good time if I’d just exchange a little money for what he’s selling.

The Handmaid’s Tale surprised me the most because I didn’t realize it was dystopian novel set in the near future after the U.S. government had been overthrown and taken over by a totalitarian, patriarchal society. (Silly me, I thought it was going to be a tale about a too-weird-for-words cult.) Thank goodness I don’t have Hula or I’d be binge watching The Handmaid's Tale seasons one and two. I long to know more! In the era we’re in right now, it’s easy to suspend my disbelief and imagine that something like the author wrote about could actually happen if we don’t reign in our collective intolerance and start doing some critical thinking about what it means to be the kind of nation our Founding Fathers envisioned---one that values Truth, Justice and Compromise. ©

Sowing Seeds for Friendship

Monday was what I call the Running of the Bulls down at the senior hall---a day that happens five times a year where we have to register for the events we want to attend over the upcoming months. We get a sixteen page newsletter in the mail, have a week to look it over and make our decisions, then not a second before 9:00 AM on an appointed day we’re allowed to respond by e-mails. By the end of that first day they will register between 1,500 to 1,700 RSVPs. The running of the bulls comes from all of us wanting the earliest time stamp we can manage on our e-mails. It could mean beating someone else out for a seat on the bus for a day trip, a ticket for a play or baseball game, a seat at a lecture or luncheon, etc. Many of those RSVPs will end up on waiting lists but if your whole social life revolves around the outcome of registration day, it can give you a rush if you snagged what you wanted. This time there were twenty-one events offered but I made a decision to cut way back on my summer sign-ups. I only RSVPed to one lecture, an ice-cream social and three Gatherings (for people looking for friends). It’s a risk for me because I usually pepper my summer with twice that, including a day trip or two. If I’m moaning and groaning this summer about being bored I’ll have no one to blame but myself. I did agonize over whether or not I wanted to go to an off-Broadway production of Wicked. The $85 for a matinee and transportation was probably a good deal but still that’s a big chunk of change.

My summers since my husband died have all had a theme. The first two summers were devoted to downsizing his stuff. The third summer I was obsessed with condo shopping that, in the end, I decided I’m not ready for yet. Last summer I was on a mission to find friends and that’s starting to pay off. Now that summer is on the horizon, six of us from the Gatherings set up monthly brunch dates and we had our first one this week where I’m sad to report we didn’t find a plan for world peace but we did talk about books, movies and going to an artists' street fair later in May, which will be our forth outing. Stepping up the number of times a month we see each other should speed up the developing friendships. “All the flowers of all the tomorrows are the seeds of today.” That saying is written on a clock that hangs in my garage. The clock was supposed to go to the Salvation Army but that’s as far as it would go without a gun held at its back.

Anyway, if I was working on a grade school theme paper on how I plan to spend my summer I’d write: “This summer I want to play with the Gathering Girls and make our budding friendships stronger and play at the gym and make my body stronger. I want to be happy and healthy and smile a lot and clean out my clothes closet.” My closet is so full that even my underwear is screaming in unison, “Get me out of here before I suffocate!”

Friendship means different things to different people. Certainly, all of us Gathering Girls want someone to hang out with and I, for one, am excited about the possibility of finding summer bonding experiences. Beyond that I’m hoping to develop a close friend or two with whom I can trade favors in case of emergencies---rides to the med center or we locked our keys in the car kind of emergencies. Friends count on each other in good times and bad. Funny thing is I never worried about those sorts of things when my husband was alive. His nephews live near-by and I figured they wouldn’t refuse helping their favorite uncle, if we ever called. (We didn't.) When they were younger Don was the good time uncle who rode them around in the back of his yellow convertible, who took them to the beach, hiking in the woods and filled them up with good memories. But Don is gone now and so is his nephew’s mother, father and the family get-togethers. As time marches on the connections with my husband’s family gets weaker and weaker. The blooms of yesterday are fading and ready to spread their seeds of friendship elsewhere, to a new generation where they’ve become the favorite uncles and the grandfathers who bounce babies on their knees. 

Looking back to past summers and to my plans for the upcoming sun-washed season apparently whipped my subconscious into a tizzy. Last night, dreams woke me up five-six times but the only one I remember is one in which I was stressed out because my husband was traveling around the country in a motor home. I could track him by a satellite feed, see what he was doing but I wanted to ring his neck because he wouldn’t answer his cell phone. What a topsy-turvy dream! I’m taking the dream to mean I still miss the best friend I ever had even though the dream dictionary indicates it’s more about suppressed anger carried over from my awake life. Oh, brother, now I have to spend the afternoon figuring out what I have to be angry about. ©