Open Writing

Smiling and flirting outrageously, the young man slipped a well muscled arm around me. “If you were 40 years younger…”

“Now!” I held up an admonishing finger in a mock scold. “Careful!”

I loved his flirting but was it so obvious that I was forty years older than him! And here was I happily consoling myself that I didn’t look my age.

“But she’s lovely, isn’t she?” he looked to his friend and around the group, then back to me. “You are, you’re lovely.”

He knew we were celebrating my birthday so I suppose he didn’t need to be very bright to work out that it was my sixtieth and sure wasn’t it nice to be flirted with on my celebratory night out?

We were in our regular haunt with sisters and brothers-in-law and, having had a lovely meal with some good wine, were sitting in an alcove near the bar, watching the young ones coming and going as they had a few drinks before going into the disco. There was lots of good hearted teasing about getting rid of the men and joining the guys for a bit of a dance. Plenty of promises made to join them shortly and good humoured laughter as we joined in their high spirits.

These two hadn’t been content to pass by with just a bit of banter.

“Are you all out for a celebration? Is it somebody’s birthday?”

The finger was pointed at me and like two eager puppies, they were over beside me. Wishing me Happy Birthday and cheekily bestowing kisses, followed by the chat-up-line.

Ah well, isn’t it lucky I am that they took time out of their evening to cheer up an ‘auld body’.

So, you’ve gathered, I’ve just become a pensioner. Personally I don’t believe it! There must be some mistake. Bound to be. Sure it seems like only a couple of years since I was going to the disco myself. And they tell me I can now collect my pension book! Not possible.

I hadn’t given it much thought, I have to say. This business of being a pensioner. Perhaps it’s time I did.

The very word ‘pensioner’ conjures up a picture, doesn’t it? For example, if I get mugged tomorrow when I’m in town shopping, the headlines will read: “Pensioner mugged on the street.” There won’t be an accompanying photograph but you won’t need one will you, because it’s easy to picture me. A grey haired old lady, stooped over with the weight of my shopping bags or trailing one of those funny little buggies behind me, and these brutish thugs have taken off with my purse which only had my pension money in it.

Eh? That’s not me! I’m neither grey haired nor stooped and I use my switch card when I go shopping. But this stereotypical image is a difficult one to erase.

Those of us who have reached this wonderful age of liberation don’t see it like that. Far from it.

The sixth decade, I’ve decided, shall be a time for me. A time for doing all those things which I didn’t have time for when I was busy with career and family. A time for doing those things which I’ve either chickened out of before or felt they weren’t ‘quite me’. If I don’t do them now, I’m never going to do them. It’s time to kick over the traces.

As someone once said: “Don’t wait for pie in the sky when you die! Get yours now, with ice cream on top!”

That’s why I was up in the air last week having my first flying lesson and yesterday, for the first time, I had a Full Body Swedish Massage at my local health spa. Boy do I feel great!

What was that little book I saw in the gift shop the other day… ‘When I’m sixty, I shall wear purple every day!’ Purple’s the in-colour this year.

I’ve been liberated. I don’t have to work any more if I don’t want to. I don’t have to do anything any more, if I don’t want to.

We pensioners are liberated from the stress and responsibilities of work, from mortgages, from children, from feeling we need to be constantly proving ourselves in this competitive environment in which we live. We have time. Time for ourselves. Time for each other. Time to be together, to enjoy each other in a more relaxed, easy fashion. There’s no rush, no need to fit things in between the desperate dash from one thing to the other. Retirement is a wonderful time: Nothing to do all day and if you leave it half done, it doesn’t matter.

Ah! I hear you say, I’m busier now than I ever was. Don’t know how I found time to go to work. Yes…but…you are busy doing things you want to do. There’s the difference.

So, now that I’m sixty, I’m going to fill my days with all the exciting things I want to do, people I want to see, places I want to go.

A pensioner? Tosh!

And that young man who chatted me up the other week? Now, if he was 40 years older…

Foyle U3A