By Kent Doyle
The thing about getting old is that you don’t see it coming. Your twenties, thirties and forties come and go with marginal changes. Then middle age sneaks up and slaps you in the face. Intellectually you know that the years are passing, but somewhere in your forties you stopped looking at mirrors in an effort to preserve your 39-year-old self-image. So when I visited my stepfather in southern Florida last year, it was with the assumption that the “young guy” (me) was visiting the “old guy” (Sherman). Furthermore, because he lived in the land of old guys, I expected reassurance that I was still in the flower of my manhood.
It didn’t work out that way, but I did save 50 cents.
Sherm has lived in the heart of one of Florida’s many retirement communities for half a dozen years now, and can scarcely remember any prior life. Because I represent one of his few remaining connections to the non-retired world, he values my visits greatly. The day I arrived, Sherm hustled me off to bed at 8:30 so I could rest up from my two-and-a-half hour plane flight. The trouble with going to bed at 8:30 p.m. is that you wake up at 2:30 a.m. But that is a different story.
On our second evening together, Sherm took me to the local mall so we could catch a movie. Sherm’s active mind is consumed with making his social security and various other modest pensions stretch to accommodate his monthly needs. As far as I can tell, this is pretty much the state pastime in Florida. His plan for the evening was to get both of us into the movies for the senior citizen’s discount price. Sherman is comfortably over the 65 age limit, but I am some 13 years under, and my first reaction was that nobody could take me for a senior. I anticipated an unpleasant confrontation at the ticket counter, but Sherm was irrepressible. With boundless confidence, he brushed aside my protests and fears.
The stakes were modest. The toll for tickets was nine dollars, or six dollars with the discount. I’m from New York, so either way seemed like a bargain to me. Besides, I was paying. Nevertheless, Sherm was eager to demonstrate his control over his environment. “Two senior citizens,” he declared, flashing my $20 bill.
The teller was an 18-something in clingy polyester with bleached hair, creamy skin, visible bra straps, and madly popping gum. In short, to my middle-aged eyes, she was heartbreakingly lovely.
“Get serious,” I expected her to say. “You can’t be 65.”
She could have winked at me with the complicity shared by two people still engaged in the war of the sexes — only she didn’t.
We could have shared an unstated but mutual amusement at Sherm’s ludicrous attempt — but we didn’t do that either.
Instead, she eyed me with the glassy disinterest usually accorded a shrub, and punched out two senior citizen’s tickets. Just like that.
Sherm’s palpable sense of triumph was annoying, but this Lolita’s indifference to the 13 years between 52 and 65 was insufferable. I saved three bucks, but my mental age advanced by years.
The real Floridians (that is to say anyone who has lived in the state for more than three years) refer to winter visitors as “snow birds.” Because old people tend to eat dinner earlier in the day, southern Florida has a custom called the “Early Bird Special.” On our second night together, Sherm had an “Early Bird Special” planned for dinner. I had never tried one, but assumed that this late-afternoon dinner would be pretty much like any other dinner, only earlier. This turned out to be partially true.
The economic model behind the early bird special is pretty straightforward. The restaurant has to be open and staffed for dinner, so why not extend the revenue-producing period by opening a few hours early? The inducement for customers is rock-bottom pricing. “Early Bird” customers are predominately retired because anyone who still works for a living is otherwise occupied at 4:30 in the afternoon.
Sherm’s selection is CC’s Pizza. CC’s is an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet joint. No matter what time you arrive, the fare is exclusively Pizza — pizza appetizers, pizza main courses, and pizza desserts. There are even pizza salads. The 3 to 5:30 feeding is priced at $3.35 for all you can eat, which includes a soft drink. In New York three bucks is a slice, and a drink would be on top of that.
When we arrived at 4:30 p.m. there was already a line 20 people deep, but it moved quickly and soon we were seated at a moderately clean table. Looking around, I had an epiphany: Out of the 70-plus people seated in the restaurant, I was clearly the youngest, the most handsome, and the thinnest human being in the room. And this was not ego speaking. I was the youngest by a dozen to 30 years, the thinnest by 30 to 100 pounds, and you’ll have to take my word about the handsomest part. In any other group of 70 or more randomly selected individuals, anywhere in the world, I would not rank in the top 50 percent of any of these categories. It was an odd and unfortunate feeling; being the best-looking guy in CC’s seemed comparable to being the richest man in Rwanda.
Two of my fellow diners had green oxygen bottles on handcarts, and were taking in oxygen and eating pizza simultaneously. This seemed to me quite a feat — accomplished by using those little plastic nose rigs. It was something I had never seen before, and I could not help wondering if it had ever occurred to these folks that their need for extra oxygen during dinner corresponded even remotely with the prodigious number of pizza slices they were shoveling into their 300 pound bodies. Not that I didn’t make a few trips to the serving counter myself. You have to be polite after all.
I saved four bucks, but couldn’t shake the troubling thought that the early shift at CC’s might soon be part of my weekly routine.
Toward the end of my stay in Florida, I became haunted by the realization that if I didn’t belong there now, I would soon, and furthermore that my efforts to deny the inevitable were fundamentally doomed. But that didn’t stop me from trying. On my last day, Sherm and I visited the Kennedy Space Center,m where admission for adults was $19, and $12.50 for a senior. In this instance “senior” was defined as 50 and up, which made me legitimate. Elated, Sherm assumed that he could trust me to avail myself of discount. I manipulated my position in line so that we were poised to pay separately, and waited. The ticket guy was probably around 70, but he looked 90. Must have been the sun. In any case, when I reached the window, the guy looked at me for about two seconds before he said, “Senior?”
Seven fifty or no seven fifty, two words passed involuntarily through my lips: “No. Adult.”
The ticket guy didn’t argue; didn’t even bat an eye. He simply took my 19 bucks and moved on to the next customer.
“Pathetic” you say, and I couldn’t agree more. But I did feel a sense of holding back the tide. Another way to look at it is through a cursory review of my vacation expenditures. I was up three bucks at the movie theater, up four bucks at the pizza joint, then down all but 50 cents at the Kennedy Space Center.
You know what? I still came out ahead. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Kent Doyle is a 50-something divorced bachelor living aboard a 44-foot trawler on the Jersey side of New York Harbor with his two canine companions: Lucy and Mr. Hudson. Kent has built hang gliders in Buffalo, run a car company in the West Indies, and written software in Manhattan without distinguishing himself at any enterprise. He can be reached at: doyle@wavestation.com.
