Living the life in Old Fogey Land

I come here annually, down to the land of sun, fun and really old people. I'm old too, so I know what I'm talking about, but honest this place is really something.

They call it God's waiting room, for a damned good reason. The newspaper we get has at least 12 people listed in the obituary, daily. We are not in a huge metropolitan area. We're on a barrier island off the west coast of Florida. There aren't that many people to warrant that many dead notices...honest...but each and every day I open the paper to find more.

After the first couple of days I decided to look at the ages of the people and see if I could figure out how they kicked the bucket. Most were old folks, well into their late 80's and 90's. I could accept that, but others were women in their early 60's and it seemed as though the illnesses that took them were pretty much the same thing, cancer.

I went to a garage sale today, which is a big social gathering thing down here. It seems that all the old folks hit the garage sales on Friday morning to check out each others junk, then end up talking about where they originated from, what they did when they weren't old, and what ailments they were fighting at the moment. The men especially.

At one of these social gatherings I met five women, all with no hair. They were all breast cancer patients in different stages of chemotherapy. They were laughing and talking about things that happened to them as a result of the chemo. None of the women wore wigs or those bandanna things. They were bald as babies and they didn't care. It was great to see they were out and about and didn't give a damn what others thought of them or their cue ball heads.

It's like that down here. Many folks seem to love to tell strangers about their last surgeries, exams, colonoscopies, wart removals or the different fungus that's engulfing their bodies like some alien life form. It's amazing. I stand, watch and listen. Honest, I couldn't make this stuff up. This is amazing. There seems to be nothing that's held back. You ask a seemingly benign question and you find out the most personal things about a person. It kind of shocks you the first few times it happens. After a while though, you sort of join in without realizing it.

I think people down here think they may as well say whatever they want to because they're not going to be here for a long time so they don't care. I'm sure when they were younger they didn't spill the beans so to speak, but they sure do now.

I met a guy today who told me that the new pills he's been taking were really helping with his excessive urination. Did I need to know that? I was looking a pair of wine glasses he was selling. Did the wine glasses remind him that he had to pee, or didn't have to now because of the pills? I don't know, but apparently he thought I should know.

How do you respond? You look at the guy and say, that's great, I should find out what those pills are so I don't have to worry about my diaper leaking....