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who are choosing carefully, taking on consignment on a
50-50 basis, and hoping for good and known brands. CWe saw a barely worn
pair of John keyer pants for $10, which gives you an idea of how it works.)
Vflio s that guy in the supermarket who knows with a flick of his calculator
Brain which of those nine sizes and colors of pickles is the best bargain?
It s the retired man, whose meanderings in a grocery store have been few,
cut wnose financial decision aiaking has been, until this aoment, on a far
heavier level,
PKS IS home to many retired people, and to quite a few middle agers* as
well. We recently bee-lined to the library for some material on manifes
tations of and treatment for the "disease**.
We found that, first of all, women, as a rule, have the easier adjustment
f change isn»t as traumatic for them. You kind of knew
at, didn t you. Their patience with tlieir men is the biggest challenge.
And women agonize and groan anyv^ay about what bugs thei^, while men often
re am pretentiousness in an effort to cover discontent or insecure feel-
inp. iiixperts suggest they would feel better if they could admit to them
selves and to each other froui time to time that they»re bored or grumpy
or cross with their wives, or really missing their old jobs.
We got thinking boy, are we lucky if we can learn that taking ourselves
^ as important as taking someone else seriously and
^^"^ow it. Or that laughing at ourselves can be a splendid and
thff tension. Like not being ashamed to tell somebody
walk ^ ^ront
walk before you discovered all you had with you was his leash. Or - like
svmptomr h memory syndrome calling another, with similar •
\ r return from a journey abroad: . »»Quick!" cried the first,
tell me all about your trip before you forget!”
And we're smart if we stop wanting to be identified with what we did or do.
and concentrate on what we are. We'll like ourselves more if we“rget“the
into repairing deck railings and
cking crabs, while shrugging off regrets about things we never did or
got. One beautiful PKS day at a time, folks. Sure, we fear ds^h, we fear
loneliness, we fear helplassness, but fear doesn't stop those things from
l^ehooves us to zero in on living and enjoying
while we can, not allowing ourselves to become preoccupied with
pettiness or to vjallow in malfunctionings of our bodies.
And you taow what alse? We can defy tradition and find it not as painful
^ ^spected! we can try spending Christmas in Malaga, or take a
wtrL Lr afternoon instead of in the morning, or put water chest-
chlLes iSL If Grandma never did. If we can let
first example is the people who go to Europe for the
first time when they're 65 and discover they can't sleep anywhere but home
®=®ak and fries, and are miserable on lumpy pension beds,
trying to digest osso bucco*
The other day ^th Gordon, outstanding Broadway actress just turned 80, vras
neard to say she figured one way to stay popular though aging was "don't
pStiver* troubles!" Kind of a cute new way of accentuating the
»f stuff to read on middle-to-late folks can be found at the Carteret
y Library. Three books vrsr were pleased with were:
^e Wonderful Crisis of Middle Age by Eda LeShan
£^QShoxa: The .b'lrst Days or Retirement by Alan H. 01mstead
Retire to Action: A Guide to Voluntary Service by Julietta K.
V ^ Arthur
readers can file the preceding paragraphs under **W” for waste-
asket, or maybe save them to read when they»re yellow and you * re mellow.
*0f the 312 registered voters, perhaps about 200 are over fiftv. Make un
your own minds about where middle age begins!