boomerlaughs

As of yesterday I have become truly, deeply, immeasurably horrified.

My husband and I took a friend to see Quantum of Solace for his birthday.  We arrived during the discount hours.  The tickets were $8.00 a piece.  OK, I can handle that.  I appreciate all that goes into a movie.

Now, I have to say that over the past year cash has been tight to say the least and we have not been to a movie theatre since late last year.  I prefer to spend my cash on buying a DVD so I can have it for ever and ever.  Being a confirmed filmophile, this suits me just fine.  I have no problem watching a film that I love over and over again.  Besides, I have just about 4,000 of them so it’s not like I don’t have anything to choose from.

Well, last year we went to the same theatre as we did yesterday and paid $6.00 during the discount time period for each ticket.  I got a MEDIUM popcorn for $4.50 and a small water for $2.00.  Sorry,  if I go to a movie at a theatre I’m GOING TO HAVE POPCORN!  My husband doesn’t like it but it’s a non-negotiable item for me.  This all seemed fair for the ticket but a little over priced for something that portions out at less than $0.25 for a small bag and $0.10 if you add butter flavoring.  Add a bag at +/- $.10 and you’ve less than $0.50 into it, and that’s at retail prices, NOT bulk pricing.  OK, there’s the machine and electricity and some blank-faced teenager one must pay minimum wage to as a method of getting popcorn and butter into a bag and then exchanging that bag for money.  Granted, they do need to know a little math (emphasis on A LITTLE).  Then there’s the space for the concession stand.

And, they need to make a profit.  No problem there, I realize they are not a church.  However,  I sidled innocently up to the counter to get a small popcorn to feed my jones and a small bottle of water.  The little price board above the stand flips over and over and over showing prices, then and advertisement, then another advertisement, then prices again.  I am CERTAIN it is to play slight-of-price to the unsuspecting consumer.  The kid behind the counter was pleasant enough but never cracked a smile.  He then proceeded to charge me $7.00 for the popcorn and $4.50 for the water.

I looked incredulously at this product of the mid-nineties and asked him to repeat himself.  I reiterated to him that I only got a SMALL popcorn and 8 ounces of water purported to be special but that we all know comes from a well on the outside of town.  He explained himself again and pointed to the price board.

I stood there, people shuffling impatiently behind me, not knowing quite what to do.  I just could NOT wrap my head around that.  For the love of Pete………..I can get an entire meal at almost any drive-through in town for half that amount, get change back, and they actually have to have someone COOK the darn meal!

I shut up, paid and joined my party in their seats.  During the entire movie (which I really enjoyed, by the way…..we saw Quantum of Solace) my mind kept going back to wonder how I could get the concession contract at this theatre.  I wondered how many kids the theatre owners had that need to go to Harvard Medical School.  I wondered if they packed Louis Vuitton luggage to take with them on their holidays to the south of France.  I wondered where I could buy shares of their stock.  I wondered WHY I was so foolish as to actually pay  for the stuff in the first place.  Why didn’t I just walk away from the counter and be happy but popcornless?

When someone is in an accident and is injured they can often go into shock which can become a life-threatening situation.  When someone goes through a traumatic experience, same thing.  I was in shock.  I’m still in shock.

I am not so naive as to not understand that there are many, many variables here.  I am aware that there are ticket takers to pay, seats to be paid for and repaired when necessary, and the list goes on.  However, I so totally don’t understand how my snack order can nearly double in price for less food in about 10 months.

It is truly beyond me.  No more movie theatre visits for moi.  NOT gonna do it.  I am, truly, deeply, thoroughly appalled!

This last time down the aisle I spouted my ‘I dos’ to a wonderful YOUNGER man.  We’re talking eleven years my Jr.  I almost qualify for Demi Moore status minus the eternally perfect hot bod and, of course, a garbage truck load of fame and fortune.  We are in our 9th year of conjugal bliss……..sometimes more conjugal……..sometimes  more bliss , always entertaining.  Regardless, I get to be a Cougar.

Last week we grabbed a cable moment to watch Factory Girl, about the life of Edie Sedgwick during the time of her idolhood with Andy Warhol.  Being a native New Yorker, I was pretty fascinated with the trip down memory lane.  And, let’s face it, if you push the question of talent aside, Andy Warhol was rather like a traffic accident on the side of the freeway;  you must look even though there is the potential of seeing something dreadful.  Edie Sedgwick ranked right up there with him only she was pretty, didn’t really paint, and her life ended up as a tragedy.

In my youth I used read about the two of them with an incredible amount of fascination and wonder.  The Happenings were a source of curiosity and I became adept at sneaking my almost Jr. High School body out to trot down the 20+ blocks to hang out and see if I could see him.  In those days New York was not quite as dangerous as it has become, but my mother still had a complete litter of kittens when she caught me.  I was forbidden, threatened, bribed, and read endless riot acts to.  Of course, it didn’t stop me.  It totally created a little obsession………..I was foaming at the mouth to see WHAT was so very awful about that man and his friends.  I was forced to become sneakier, and sneakier, and sneakier.  Thank goodness my mother had her own little obsession with contract bridge that took hold of her most afternoons.  Once the cards were dealt I became child non-grata and could have slipped out of a room tiled with plastic bubble wrap wearing football cleats and she wouldn’t have noticed.

When the original building Andy lived in burned down (or was torn down-I don’t remember) it became increasingly hard to toddle off to Warhol land.  However, I am not one who is easily deterred.  I found a friend who lived in Gramercy Park which was within reasonable distance to Andy’s new digs.  That friendship was cut short when she noticed that I was always trying to drag her out of her building and down to where the new Factory was.  She didn’t like waiting on the street with nothing to do for the slight possibility that he would show up.  She didn’t like that I was using her.  I was too young to understand that the purpose I used her for was not what friendship was about.  I’m sorry Janice! (pronounced Jan-eeese)  I know better now.

Suffice it to say that Andy Warhol was a part of my growing up.  Edie Sedgwick was too.  In those days we didn’t have a Paris Hilton or Hanna Montana splashed on every page to go gaga over.  We had some teen idols, however, we also had the more sophisticated, quirky people with which to mold our curiosity genes, especially in New York.

Silly me, in my ripe aging brain I thought it was the same all over the world and the same throughout the generations.  And now, being the cougar that I have become, I am beginning to face the fact that it is not always true.  The generations that followed are blissfully unaware of the likes of …….say…..Gene Tierney or June Lockhart.  They know who Lassie was, but they don’t know who June Lockhart was.  And my Andy is right there among them.  Campbell’s soup cans, cows, Marilyn Monroe in multi-hued repetition be damned, they don’t recognize the shock of white bowl-cut hair and the odd voice.  Andy’s voice was something of a genius of a tool for marketing and making an impression.   It was so quiet, hushed and odd that a person just HAD to listen to what he said.  Now THAT’S some serious communication power.

I miss him, now that he’s passed on.  For that reason I truly loved the movie, which was actually rather so-so.  What made me love it was bringing back the memories and re-enjoying the weird obsessions of my youth.  When the movie was over I was rather giggly, looking at my husband.  I was filled with delight when I asked him what he thought, and “Oh my, can you BELIEVE how much it was just like Andy Warhol??”.  I expected agreement with a little bit of wonder mixed in.  What I got was…………….”Who’s Andy Warhol?  And who were all those weird people? I don’t get it.”

I’m sorry Andy,  your 15 minutes seem to have been up for quite some time now.  (and if you don’t know what THAT means……….there is no hope for you!)

In the 70s, 80s, and 90s I was known for the 4″ stilettos I wore.  Ankle wrapped and often black patent (my favorite, and no Virginia, they don’t really reflect up!) and God forbid I forget to mention the over-the-knee boots………HOW I LOVED them!

Often criticised because they were just too, too out there at the time, I kept right on wearing them.  I LOVED the way my legs looked in them.  Don’t forget that women still wore suits to work, the more manly looking the better.  But for me, Imelda Marcos was the goddess supreme as far as tootsies were concerned.  They were often difficult to find, no on-line shoe boutiques were to be found….in fact, no on-line anything was to be found.  My goodness, I can’t believe we actually had electricity then!

But alas, I stream fashionista tears.  I am surrounded by Manolo Blaniks, Yve St. Laurent (may he rest in peace), Pradas, Bottega Venetas, Fendis, Derek Lams, Christian Laboutins, and Pierre Hardys……….FABULAS heels that were never available in my day……..and I can’t wear a one of them!  DAMN!

Age has taken it’s toll on my feet and calves (we’re not even going to address my back) and I have been reduced to the cesspool of all shoe cesspools, the comfortable shoe.  Not even a two inch heel!  It’s thick-soled ballet slippers for moi.

Last fall my husband and I went to see Carmen.  It was his first Opera (he’s in a progressive metal rock band but he likes all live music) so I wanted to pull out the works.  I bought a pair of kick-butt gunmetal patent shoeties with elegant scrolled metal tips and heel guards.  The toes had a little marcasite jewel in the tips.  They were HOT, and only 2 1/2″ heels.  I thought I could bear them for ONE night.  ALL we did was cross the parking lot, go into the theatre, and sit for 4 hours and I was nearly crippled by the time we got back to the car!  I couldn’t walk for two days.  So it was obvious that I was doomed to flat shoes forever, and ever, amen.  I cried.

Good bye, Christian Laboutin!  I will see you in my dreams.  I am sorry, Imelda, that I’ve let you down.  Sex and the City……my lamentations reach funeral proportions each time I watch you.  I can, and have, handled the inequities of holding paper three miles away from my face in order to read it, propping up jowls and wrinkles with auto putty, and having my forehead resemble Niagra Falls in 30 degree weather with no coat.  But, this, THIS, this is a monumental loss.  It’s MY mid-life crises.  I envy Meryl Streep who, ahead of me by almost 10 years, tripped the light fantastic in The Devil Wears Prada donning hot shoe after hot shoe after hot shoe.  I was totally envious.

I had always wondered why I saw older women wearing the dreaded comfortable shoes.  I thought they were just behind the times and questioned why they didn’t pull themselves into a little more attractive state.  NOW I know.  And it ‘ain’t’ pretty!  They CAN’T!

Bah-bye, Christian.  I shall miss you!

With aging there often comes changed and altered bodily functions.  They are unpleasant at best. Sometimes they can be dealt with, sometimes they become one’s daily horror that can only be endured, covered up, or ignored.

Such an altered state is the inability to control flatulence either by timing or amount.

This particular change came upon me quite gradually…..I thought I might just be eating something that was causing all of this.  Not so, it seems.  EVERYTHING now gives me gas.  And worse, it seems that I can no longer bend at the waist, sneeze, cough, or walk at a fast pace without it’s vile presence being known to the world.

It’s not just odoriferous, it’s bad in it’s announcements.  It shows up at the worst possible moments, usually in stores; definitely when there are other people innocently shopping in the same aisles as I am.  Never, never, never does the wicked beast hold itself in check until I have climbed alone into my car, or out of earshot from others of my species.  No, it is not that polite a beast.  It waits in its lair until it is certain that there is a crowd before it makes itself known.  Dinner parties, you ask?  Prime time for an appearance of the beast.  Grocery stores?  Like clockwork.

As I explained to my best friend, it is as if the beast were insuring that I am not able to shop at any store.  One by one they are being eliminated as places where I dare not show my face again.  I can no longer go to Costco, Safeway (4 of them),  Albertson’s (3 of them), Nordstroms, Macy’s (but it’s pretty big, I can still shop in some departments)the Seven-Eleven down the street from me, Winco (1), the mini-mart at the Texaco station, and two Plaid Pantry’s.  Once I was in Safeway and with each step down the aisle the beast emitted a small peep.  I sounded like a defective Model T ambling it’s way to the mechanic’s.  Slowly, but surely, I am being reduced to shopping on line.  That is, until I’m old enough not to really care anymore.

I have removed (systematically) items from my diet, the way that I drink liquids, I have taken Beano and all it’s cousins, but to no avail.  The only thing I make sure of is NOT to consume ANYTHING at least three hours prior to shopping or going to an event.  I believe 2007 was my last season at the opera.  Thank GOD movie theatres have LOUD sound systems.  At least that venue is not forbidden to me (yet)!

Will this stall me out in life?  Not at all.  I hope, someday, to be known as “The Little Engine That Could”.

It seems always something simple that throws me for a loop as I age.

My car was in the shop for what seemed an intolerable length of time while the mechanics worked at figuring out why it just kept stopping for no apparent reason.  Three times.

During this time my friend graciously lent me his hot little red covertable Mustang with the 5.0 liter engine.  It was brutal on the gas mileage but I was grateful to have it’s use to say the least.  The advantage of having it was: 1. the ability to get from point A to point B with little effort, and 2. when I filled up with gas every hot young fuel jockey would come over to the car and treat me like I was Angelina Jolie.  They asked me questions and spouted out macho topics like how fast it could go and how quickly it hit 60 mph and how they’d just die if they had a convertible.

I relished the attention, being as I’m 50+, have lost count at the number of chins I have and can slap myself in the face by just raising my arm and waving.  We don’t even need to go into the fact that I can easily mistake a barn for a stop sign unless I have my glasses on.

Well, it was a fun time for a while.  Now my conservative little Beemer (she’s getting pretty old, too) has taken her place parked by my condo once again.  I needed to return the sassy little Mustang to it’s rightful owner and I wanted to do it with style.

I like to leave borrowed items in at least as good a condition (if not better) as they were when I borrowed them.  Value added.  I believe it’s a polite, responsible way to show gratitude and friendship.  Therefore, I thought I would detail the car as it seemed to need a good waxing and my friend has a white Papillion doggie that leaves long white hairs and other pieces of muck all over the black sheep-skinned interior.

I hadn’t actually detailed a car in a while, and certainly not one that is this low to the ground with an almost-non-existent back seat.  I set about collecting all of the appropriate tools, vinyl protectant, Armoral, Turtle wax, Windex, rags, etc.

My first stop was vacuuming out the interior at the local car wash.  I almost killed myself getting into the back seat (it was sprinkling a bit so the top had to stay up), but I made it finally, pulling the anaconda hose (that seems to only bend every 4 feet) with me.  The movements were difficult at best: confined space; 20 feet of 5″ wide coiled vacuum hose;  5′10″ tall woman that no longer bends where she used to; suction.  If any one had looked they would have seen something similar to a large cat fully inside a small fish bowl wiggling around with an angry look on his face.  I ended up with a cramp in my side and one in my left leg.  I also acquired several bruises in places that I am still unsure about.  The worst of it was the getting out.  When I finally maneuvered my way to the outside world I stood up and stepped backward to put the hose back on its rack never noticing that part of the hose was coiled up behind me on the ground.  I stepped straight on it, it turned (as round things do) and I fell flat on my back knocking the wind out of me temporarily.  Others who were vacuuming their cars came running.  I waved them off, not being able to speak, and smiled trying to assure them I was (with the exception of my pride) intact.   This was not pretty. 

Dusting myself off, I crawled back into the car and drove it through the car wash.  No problem.  I was half-way done (so I thought).  Back home to rest a bit and finish up.

One would think that a person in fair shape should not have to ‘rest a bit’ after something so mundane as vacuuming out a car and driving it through the car wash.  But I needed it.

On with the project.  After polishing the exterior and surface restoring the vinyl top I climbed in once again.  Cat-in-fish-bowl style I jambed knuckles and scraped knees, bruised and cramped my way with Armoral and Leather cleaner scouring every inch of the vehicle until it was in better-than-new shape.  By that time, the sun was going down I needed a shower, a chiropractor, band-aids, liniment, moisturizer, a masseuse, a pedicure, three glasses of water, Advil AND Tylenol, eye drops, a heating pad, a manicure, Q-tips for my ears (I don’t know HOW dirt got in there!), calcium tablets and a banana(for the muscle cramps), an ace bandage for my ankle, and three days of sleep, a cold compress for my head, and new clothes (what I wore was completely destroyed).

It’s murder getting old.  I just can’t remember something that should be simple being this complicated and disparaging.  I felt as though I had been with our troupes in Afghanistan, only not that good.

Approaching the Mustang to take it on it’s return trip to the rightful owner, I just glared at it.  It gleamed like a car had never gleamed before, but all I could think of was, “They shoot horses, don’t they?”.

AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

Finally I have faced the dreaded thing………..AGE DISCRIMINATION!   At 54 I find the company I have worked for has gone out business, the economy being what it is.

Competition is tough, no doubt about it.  It is irksome, however, to even think about having to compete with whippersnappers who weren’t even around when President Kennedy was shot.  Who, in their mindless inexperience, do not realize that the new modern look of interior design is a direct rehash of those awful colors and designs of the 50s and 60s.  They were ugly then, and they’re ugly now.  And God save us from belly shirts!  I am THRILLED that they are moving out of style.  I only know of 6 women who could wear them and have them be even remotely flattering.

Competing.  Didn’t think I’d have to do THAT again, especially with people 20 years younger than I.  I pitty them, however, for they do not know.

I totally HATE the looks of mild amusement and condescension I am given during a job interview.  They worry so.  Will she have a heart attack?  Can she even handle a computer?  Can she keep up?  Her ideas may surface from another century.  Does she even know what’s going on in the world? 

Do ‘I’ know what’s going on in the world?  Geeez, the big question is, do they?  Nope, save for a few.

Many, many of them are a  bunch of inexperienced know-it-all dolts that haven’t really thought this thing through.  They praise and push the 20 and 30 somethings, listening to their ideas in the board room as if they were new. They think they’ve invented sliced bread.  Comments by anyone with grey hair seem to be taken with a grain of salt, dismissed for ‘lacking originality’, or politely tolerated, that is, unless the grey hair happens to own the company.

What are they missing?  They have not yet learned that history repeats itself and are therefore doomed.  They have not yet learned that there truly is nothing new under the sun.  Oh, it may look new.  It may act new.  The truth is, it was there all along and we just didn’t see it.

They use words like fresh, young, upbeat, fashion forward, marketable, out of the box……..as if these were words and ideas that baby boomers were unfamiliar with.  They often tell us we are not being open minded.  I find this laughable.  I roll on the floor.  Talk about PROJECTION!  The very idea that they have categorized us indicates their own close mindedness.  Now, please notice that I am NOT, by any means, unaware that I have categorized THEM too.!  There’s the beauty of being older.  You get to recognize your own foibles and those of everyone else.  Too often, however, we baby boomers don’t realize just how valuable we really are.  We  KNOW a thing or two.  We have (hopefully) developed a thing or two.

We have:

Fought for peace and embraced love and learned how far to go with that;

Know how to spell words correctly and know that ‘boys’ isn’t spelled with a ‘Z’ for Christ’s sake, and while it was cute and saucy for a while it’s now boring and reeks of  a lack of intelligence;

Know that patience IS actually a virtue;

Know that just because you can doesn’t mean that you should; 

Know that being polite and kind is the opposite of being a self-centered jerk who cannot sit in traffic for 10 seconds at a time without blowing a gasket;

Know that the economy works on supply and demand as well as fear and greed;

Know that friends, family, and health are the only really important things (this one I had to learn in my 30s);

Know that respect is something you give automatically until someone causes you to lose it;

Know that a work day is usually 8 hours, not 5 hours with 3 hours of chatting and surfing the net;

We know that the customer is always right and we attend to them putting their needs first;

We know enough to put our hand over our mouths when we cough;

We know that there are many unpleasant things that we must experience in order to get where we want to go and that it’s a part of life;

We know how to take pride in our work.

I wonder if they all put a little perspective on things that they would realize what it means that the majority of our sex symbols are over 50?  That our world leaders are NOT in their 20’s?  That baby boomers never really retire, we just go on to our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th careers.  We may not all be crackerjack gang-busting geniuses, but together and separately we’ve forgotten more than they will probably ever know.

If this younger set of business people decided to get it right, they’d hire us on the spot and take advantage of the blocks that we’ve been around.  Having been around the block a few times, you tend to know where you’re going.

Most of my friends fall into two groups, the stoic air signs (Aquarius, Gemini, Libra) and the dramatic, overly emotional water signs (pisces, cancer, Scorpio).  They hold each other with disdain, the air signs often ridiculing the off-beat ways of the water signs.

I wrote the following homage to the water signs standing in the shows of the air signs.  Being a water sign,  my compassionate self (uh hmm, cough, cough) sought to give divine directive to our warts and idiosyncrasies.

……and god said: “Let there be water signs so that the drama can begin, and let them know yearning and uncontrollable desire. Let them be passionate and needy and take everything personally.  And let the air signs show disgust and disdain for their mushy dispositions.  Let the earth signs stand perplexed at their inability to control their emotions and let the fire signs totally ignore their frustrated gloominess.  And let the tavern doors open up so that they may troll endlessly for the bodies of hot men in tight jeans.  Let sappy commercials cause tears to flow from their eyes and let the welfare of every living animal touch their hearts.  May their friends and relatives look at them in continual bewilderment as to why they can not seem to get their shit together.  May the water signs dwell  at night.  May they be compelled to find whatever is under the rock.  May they be drawn to powerful music and dark movies.”   And god said, “Let them wear black.  And they wore black. And the earth saw that it was weird, and the beings in the heavens rolled their eyes behind their backs.”