Early Bird

Yesterday on the T, I stood next to a feisty foursome, none of whom were under age sixty. They were very much the stereotypical Florida retirement community type: the guys wore bright-colored Bermuda shorts, the ladies wore flower patterned shirts over shapeless linen capris, and they talked incessantly about how Joan Rivers performing live standup was the funniest thing they've ever seen. What really caught my attention was their further conversation, though:

Wife #1: We should go to the aquarium. Did you hear about those seals that died?
Husband #1: No. Did you hear Bruno Kirby died?
Husband #2: Who's Bruno Kirby?
Wife #1: You know, Bruno Kirby. He was in those Billy Crystal movies. When Harry Met Sally, and that one about the cows.
Husband #2: What?
Husband #1, louder: Cows! City Slickers! Billy Crystal and cows!
Wife #2: I don't care for that Billy Crystal. Let's go to Faneuil Hall instead of the aquarium.

I was amused and more than a little charmed by these still-active senior citizens, until I realized that at some point, we're all going to be these people. After retirement, there's a pretty good chance that it's all circular conversations and yelling so that your increasingly deaf friends can hear you. And then the whole retirement community thing made a little more sense. Why subject yourself to the unspoken judgment of some kid next to you on public transportation, when you could surround yourself with people who are more likely to share your affinity for Joan Rivers?

Of course, it doesn't hurt that earlier in the week, I finished reading Rodney Rothman's Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement, and was predisposed to consider such things. Rothman's book explores what it's like to ditch one's burned-out working life at age 28, and venture early into retirement. Specifically, he seeks the authentic experience: living in a small community in Florida, among the people who actually worked and saved for forty years before going south. The shortcut certainly sounds appealing; working for so long feels kind of like a chump proposition, from the twentysomething end of things.

But if the premise is a bit cynical (particularly given that Rothman is a former writer for Letterman and other snarky TV shows), he turns it around into a sweeter narrative about his own development as a young-old person. Armed with guides like Successful Aging and an openness for activities like 4 pm dinners and shuffleboard, Rothman's goals become less about getting away from his own life and more about fitting into a new one. You know that part of Groundhog Day where the Bill Murray character grows a conscience and starts learning piano, feeding the homeless guy, etc.? The vibe is kind of like that, but articulated better, and less cheesily altruistic.

The best moments come from the casual social observations that come once Rothman is ensconced in Century Village (albeit illegally, as a boarder of a woman he found through a Florida-specific roommate finding service). It's almost comforting to know that the pervasiveness of high school cliques never really ends; the Mean Girls just convene by the pool instead of the cafeteria, and wear floppier hats. Ditto for the high school baseball team, only now there's a wiry, bearded Mennonite playing second base. Rothman tries to capitalize on his youth in all these activities and dominate the old people to reassure himself that he's not really retired, but often fails hilariously.

There's also a lot of surprising info about the citizens of retirement communities, such as the general vibrancy of their sex lives. JDate is quite the popular tool down there, apparently. And Rothman tries out the requisite dating for himself--keeping it to women his own age for the most part, but also pondering whether it's okay to sleep with an unexpectedly attractive 75-year-old woman, in one extremely funny chapter.

Ultimately, Rothman comes to the conclusion one might expect: that retirement is only viable for those who have a decade or two to revel in it, not five or six decades. But he made a good run at the lifestyle, and produced a highly entertaining book in the meantime.

Some favorite passages:

On the Great Florida Migration: "Many of these communities prohibited any resident under the age of fifty-five. To me, that seems delightfully vengeful and vindictive. It's like an act of civil disobedience. Millions of senior citizens shouting, 'You don't want us? We don't want you!' from the Florida peninsula, which suddenly resembled a giant downward-facing middle finger. It was a revolution, an octogenarian Boston Tea Party. The only difference was that these colonists would stick each tea bag in their purses for later use. Why let a perfectly good tea bag go to waste?" (24)

On baseball, played by the elderly or not: "The second baseman pivots and throws to first, and I barely beat out a double play....The old guys laugh. Then I hear Eli say from the dugout, 'If I had his hundred and sixty pounds on my body, I'd hit it a lot further than that.' I'm not sure if anyone has ever been dissed by a peace-loving Mennonite, but does it get lower than that?" (60)

On sex with an older woman: "I've been telling my friends I slept with Vivian. I didn't really. It's another one of my weather balloons. I get to see how they would have reacted if I had actually slept with her, without any of the guilt of having gone through with it.
It's interesting to see how people respond. Most find the idea so ridiculous they refuse to believe me. It's just not possible. My friend Jenni just snorts and says, 'You're a bad liar.' In the case of Nick, his reaction is several short, sharp intakes of breath, an awkward silence, a nervous laugh, and finally a troubled stamp of approval: 'Dude,' he says, 'that's awesome.'" (156)

On an 80-year-old standup comedienne: "Her act was a mix of 'dirty jokes and prop comedy.' She performs bits and pieces of it for me. 'I'd pull out a cucumber,' she tells me, 'and I'd say, "Ladies, who needs a man when you can buy cucumbers for a dollar?" And then I'd point at the knobs on the cucumber and say, "Men don't even have speed bumps!"'
'You said that?' I ask, a little shocked.
'People loved it,' she says.
The more I think about it, the more I like her cucumber joke. It's the perfect joke for an eighty-year-old raunch to tell, combining shock value with coupon clipping. And as far as fruit-and-vegetable humor goes, it sure as hell beats hitting watermelons with sledgehammers." (69)