Are You Ready For The Seniors' Living Environment?
I am now settled into my new home in a retirement development on the south side of Charlotte, North Carolina. Well actually even that gets confusing because my address is a Pineville, N.C. address. Pineville is an incorporated section of the city, totally invisible except for highway signs that announce 'City Limits' – a sure, and I guess, obvious sign to world travelers that you have entered Pineville. To the locals you have a more positive indication that you have just zoomed through Pineville because Pineville has neither the capability nor the budget to repair their streets. This as you might imagine makes for noticeably rough passage. Uhh, …. don't try ..… it's a North Carolina thing. OK?
My new home, called "The Dorchester", is a large hotel-like structure housing some 240 apartments and a host of activity rooms. Modest but very comfortable, the most distinguishing characteristic of the facility is that it is quiet – real quiet. From inside your apartment you hear no neighbor noise. For instance, until I open my front door I can not hear the piano my neighbor across and down the hall one door plays seemingly 24/7. The good news is that she intends to interrupt her concert and come out and celebrate as soon as Harry Truman's re-election is confirmed. Her husband is insisting that she trade in the sheet music for her existing four songs for four new ones – some tunes really new and more modern - maybe stuff like, say, Irving Berlin.
The other thing that makes for the quiet atmosphere of The Dorchester is that approximately twenty-two hours a day the halls and activity rooms are deserted – totally vacant. I am told that the majority of the apartments house couples, which would indicate that there are about 350-400 folks in residence. I estimate that in my three months here that I have not even laid eyes on about 300 of them. About the only flurry of activity comes when the U.S. Postal service arrives to fill up the mail-boxes. Just imagine the waiting residents, shifting from one foot to the other in frustration with how long it takes the mailman to stuff 340 mailboxes with today's wide assortment of junk mail. But the thrill of pursuing the latest Harris Teeter flyer soon permeates the entire ground floor. And the shared exuberance of the assembled masses (well two dozen people or so) on the day the Walmart flyer hits is hard to describe.
Our biggest retirement concern seems to be time management. What are we going to do all day? Let me assure you, passing the time is not a problem. For starters first thing in the morning you can go to the main lobby or one of the meeting rooms and say good morning to the dozen or so people who do manage to come out of their apartment. This also is an easy way to start the day because it seems to be on tape – each day's conversation an exact re-play of yesterday. "My name? Larry...... Not exactly new, I've been here three months... No I came from Panama... Yes ma'am, we have met.... No that was my book you read … No I didn't charge you for it …. No, I have always had the beard....."
Then major portions of our days are eaten up by simple, daily activities. For some of the residents just getting in the car takes 15 minutes, while others need a bit more time to figure out where they parked. Luckily the Dorchester has a person at the front desk to help residents determine whether they even have a car, and if so provide a make, model and color description of same.
An automobile is not a requirement for most residents of the Dorchester as the complex makes regularly scheduled shopping-trip runs to the malls nearby. Every morning there is a collection of shoppers in the complex's lobby waiting for the Dorchester's shuttle bus to forge off on either the Bi-Lo and Bank of America run or the Harris Teeter and BB&T Bank itinerary. It appears that the majority of the folks who partake daily in the wait for the shuttle bus are undeterred by the fact that the bus only runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But then one lady explained to me that it keeps her active and engaged. Very similar to the practice of purchasing an unwanted item on one trip to Walmart, which means you can spend one hour getting a refund on the item the next trip. This evidently is preferable to just standing around waiting for the return bus to the Dorchester..
There is one small, though energetic, group that goes for an early morning walk daily – or so I have been told for there is a limit to my curiosity level involving personal observations. They are said to rise at 5:00 am, have a quick breakfast and hit the street in what some describe as a tantalizing experiment with producing road kill. One former member of the group became disenchanted and dropped out complaining that the groups' collective hearing impairments couple with traffic noise resulted in little more than a walk around the streets, all talking at once. He also re-named the group 'The Early Morning Walk-and-Fart Club'. After a nimble walk, and assuming that at least one person in the group can find the way back home, most then shower and change for the next activity, while trying desperately to determine what that activity might be.
A number of the women then go directly to the pool for the underwater Pilates class. There are a number of side benefits to this endeavor including practicing gasping for breath and real CPR. It also tends to be a fashion show which mystifies most outside observers about the elderly woman's ideas about what constitutes exercise clothing. Management has also had to prohibit those leaving the class from making those stops for a nap in the lobby en-route back to their rooms. There is also a move afoot to ban completely the T-shirts adorned with the saying, "Ask Me About My Tricks", and "Dorchester Dominatrix". I think the real complains have to do more with observers who had a thing about plaid pedal-pushers combined with the black argyle socks and sandals.
Before we know it, it's time for lunch. Some go to Costco to partake of the many tasty samples dispensed by ladies in white hair nets. All free! After a filling lunch, if we don't have any doctor appointments, we might go to the flea market to see if any new white belts have come in or to buy another Rolex watch for $2.00.
But It is now of utmost importance to be back home by 3:00 pm to get ready for dinner. Many people start lining up for the early bird about 4:00 pm, so they need that time to get prepared for dinner. I can't stand early dinner so I shoot to be there a little later, but have to insure I get there by 4:45 – because that is when they close up. They do reluctantly hold that 5:00 pm time reserved for us late eaters. The dinners are very popular because of the large portions they serve. We can take home enough food for the next day's lunch and dinner, including extra bread, crackers, packets of mustard, relish, ketchup and Splenda, along with mints. Obviously we don't have to buy napkins either.
I kind of hurry through dinner in an effort to be back in the apartment by 5:45, so I can catch the 6 o'clock news. I finally had to accept that watching the 7:00 o'clock newscast is not a good option for someone who is fast asleep by 6:30 pm.
On a normal day that pretty much fills up the day. Just get up and make five or six trips to the bathroom during the night, and it's time to get up and start a new day all over again.
Doctor-related activities are also an excellent way to eat up a big portion of our retirement time. And if you are the type that enjoys reading old magazines in sub-zero temperatures in the waiting room, you are truly in hog heaven. Calling for test results also helps the days fly by. It takes at least a half-hour just getting through the doctor's phone menu. Then there's the hold time until we're connected to the right party. Sometimes they forget we're holding, and the whole office goes off to lunch. But there will be those rare occasions when you actually understand what the nurse is telling you about the test results, and can still remember what was said after you hang up.
Should we find we still have time on our hands, volunteering provides a rewarding opportunity to help the less fortunate. This area of North Carolina had a large concentration of seniors who stated interest in getting a GED, so some of us put together an assistance plan. However participants' interest fell off quickly when they discovered that a GED was neither a model of Chevrolet or a NASCAR souvenir product. We had to change our focus and luckily found a good-ole-boy adviser to help us target the interests of the locals. I do not think any of us would have identified the interest in Road-Kill Cuisine or Hog Acrobatics on our own. Music seminars turned out to be of even less interest primarily due to a squabble about the inherent differences between the banjo and a mandolin. I really think that whole argument was incited by the zither enthusiasts.
Two of our most energetic members have also undertaken a big project working with local supermarket chains. Food shopping is a problem for many of our seniors because they can't reach the top shelves while simultaneously hanging on to their walkers (we called them the 'bottom feeders'). If we can just figure out a way for them to reach the items on the upper shelves it will open up menu selections they have been deprived of for years - maybe many foods the shorter ones have never tasted. We are also trying to perfect new packaging materials to accommodate the shopping seniors who can't remember where they parked their cars and wander the parking lot aimlessly while their food defrosts.
Lastly, I suggest to all of you that it's extremely important for you to choose a development with an impressive and easy to remember name. Many of the residents living here seem to have trouble with the name, "Dorchester". First of all it is too long, and worse yet it doesn't rhyme with anything. So all to often the slightly confused senior has trouble explaining to someone where he lives. "No dear, it is 'Dor ..Chester' not 'Chest a Drawers'.
I hope this material has been of help to you future retirees. If I can be of any further assistance, please look me up when you're in Florida. Oops, sorry I meant Raleigh. I'll still be living in the Leaning Condos of Pisa in here off of Boynton Beach.
Have Fun
Larry Matthews (I think that's the name)