The Fun of Aging

When we are young some of us worry about making a fool of ourselves.  We sometimes avoid doing things we know we would enjoy, just because we think someone might laugh, or make fun of us later.  For instance, after moving from one coast to another, I was nervous about going to a school dance because my dancing style might be different from that of the new locality. I probably wouldn't have gone if my mother had not physically pushed me out the door. When performing in a mandatory school choir, I usually just mouthed the words, as I didn't feel I could carry a tune and didn't want to be heard.

Now I'm older and have a place to go that's full of senior citizens where I feel the freedom to just be who I am, and have fun without worrying about what others think.  It's still the only place I'll actually sing out loud though, other than the privacy of my own home or car.

The New Horizon Club meets twice a month, in Burritts Rapids,  for a wide variety of activities.  This week they held an event titled Viva Las Vegas. I wasn't sure what would transpire, but knew we would have a good time.

I got drafted to be in charge of one of the Black Jack tables. This is silly because I don't play cards. I'd been told early in life that I have NO card sense so many times that I just decided not to bother playing anymore.  As a result, I'm very awkward even handling the cards. I quickly found someone else who could deal, and decided I'd be in charge of the chips.  Neither of us were really sure of the rules, but we learned them, or adopted some of them and made up others for our particular table.  There was no money involved, as it was just for fun.  Everyone who played was given 10 chips and instructed at the beginning of the event to please leave the table if they lost them all, so that someone else could take their seat. I think, over the course of the afternoon, we only ever had two people at the table who actually knew what they were doing. But we all had a great time.

Then came the floor show.  Four of our ladies got all dressed up and performed a couple of dances for us up on the stage. Before they were finished, I know for a fact that they were all wearing red underwear. They made sure we saw that when they did the CanCan! There was nothing professional about this performance.  They expected, and got laughs, though it was meant to be more of a dance number than a comedy act. That doesn't matter as they were having as much fun trying to keep in step as we were having watching them. 

When they were finished they circulated through the crowd, flirting with the men and sometimes even planting a kiss on an unsuspecting cheek.





And what's Vegas without Elvis?  The president of this group came in, in a mainly white outfit, complete with bell bottomed trousers.  He had a wig on his head that was supposed to look like Elvis's pompadour, but in reality was a lady's long black wig that had been pinned up at the back with dozens of very visible bobby pins.  He tried to lip sync with the music, but most of the time he just posed or gyrated and broke us all up into gales of laugher.  We were even singing along at one point....me included. 

I love the freedom of aging and feeling more comfortable in your own skin.  You are only here once and should enjoy the ride. Too bad we have to wait so many years before we realize that.