Are you my tribe?

I’m 74 years old. I joined Medium because every time I read about people like me — my tribe — in articles written by people not like me since they are significantly younger than I, (≠my tribe) I don’t recognize the person in the article. Not necessarily on Medium. Old people are content, although the content providers insist on calling us “seniors” as if we’re trying to determine where we should go to college. You know how there is a certain type of person in the helping professions who talks about you as if you aren’t in the room? There is a plethora of analysis and advice about being old, almost all of it from people who have never been there. That content is riddled with third person pronouns.

However, until now, I hadn’t published anything on Medium. The reason I gave myself is I write for a living. I’m a business writer in the trade show industry. Yes, that’s a thing. Much of my writing appears under someone else’s name, and that’s fine. But I do a lot of writing, so when it comes to, as we used to say, “taking pen in hand” to produce something that is not work related, more pressing concerns always seems to be competing for my time and attention. Like books, concerts, theater, restaurants, grandkids, friends, bike-riding, walking — alone or in various combinations — all the things that fill my days when I’m not writing/working.

So, the writing thing. Sitting at a concert tonight listening to the band Cracker (love them!), I told myself that when I came home, I would start my first post. Of course, before I did that, I had to write to my grandkids at camp, a process in which I make a concerted effort to sound very chatty (“your emails sound like you talk, grandma) but before I hit “I am not a robot,” I proofread and edit these nightly emails to within an inch of their lives. That’s who I am.

For the record, my first memory of writing was in third grade. I remember showing something I had written in admirable Catholic school cursive to my mother, and she savaged it. My mother never went beyond high school, but whatever she said made a difference. From then on, I wrote all the time — to everyone. I wrote thank you notes for my mother, who was insecure about her own writing. I wrote letters to the Illinois Central Railroad, asking for an extension of my father’s leave of absence so he could continue working at the Chicago Produce Terminal, a joint venture between the IC and the Santa Fe. When I was on vacation, I wrote to my friends, and their mothers would tell me later how much the whole family enjoyed my letters. I published two articles in the Chicago Tribune and was paid $5.00 for each. I simply love to write. I like anything that will make me a better writer, and over the past almost 70 years, I have seen not only writing styles evolve and change but my voice as well. There — I had to put it out for you to understand.

However, writing as I do now for work has become enough of a daily fix for me — Grammarly tells me I write more than 99% of its members. I became aware of my resistance to non-work writing years ago when I tried on-line dating. There are a number of sites for old people to meet other old people. In the spirit of transparency, as they now say in corporate America, I joined one of these sites recently (meaning I sent them money and turned off auto-renew; that really pisses them off) to see whether anything had changed in the 18 years since the last time I attempted to on-line date. Today the dating sites are all about algorithms, which might be good — I don’t know. The email alerts read like the notes we passed in seventh grade. (“He’s really into you!”)

Here’s my problem: responding to someone’s “interest” in me — although how interested can they be when they send a suggested canned message? “I really like your profile picture” — is a lot like my work. In the past, because I am a professional writer, my responses to men who are “really into” me have been so well written that guys found me attractive based on the written word. And (yes, by the way, I am cis-gender) I remember once, during an early on-line encounter, writing “You are only reading my email. My email is not me. You don’t even know me.” Fail.

Some of the people who like my profile picture sound as if they need someone to take care of them. Like the man whose home is an assisted living facility or the one who wants to meet a woman with a bus pass because he can no longer drive. Sad, but didn’t they read the profile that I took such pains to put together? Because I’m a writer?

Besides being a writer, I’m also a voracious reader who believes reading lots of fiction is a prerequisite for being a writer — just sayin’. While I don’t expect everyone to read as much as I do, can I at least expect dating hopefuls to read my profile? You would think simple statements such as, “I want someone who lives in Chicago” wouldn’t elicit responses from seemingly nice men who live in Nebraska. When I say I’m an other, the guy who writes that he wants a woman who loves the Lord would appear to be not much of a reader. And when I say I don’t want to get married, why do people who are looking for “my last great love” write to me? What’s wrong with wanting someone to hang out with, to eat pizza with, to to listen to Cracker with? Or for that matter, to end sentences with prepositions with?

The writing and reading thing aside, what I like about not being the last love of someone’s life is I don’t have to negotiate. I don’t want to give up closet space for anyone ever again. I watch couples in the grocery store, debating (arguing?) about what type of yogurt to buy. I think it is fair to say that my generation — pre-Boomer — bought into role expectations big time. Our values were formed during the Eisenhower years, and as an Irish Catholic kid, by watching Bishop Sheen preach against the godless communists.

Along with my writing, I have evolved significantly from my blue collar South Side of Chicago roots. The last man I dated with any degree of seriousness ate white bread and insisted on a 5:30 PM dinner time. My awareness of nutrition and my embrace of a rather sophisticated social calendar tells me, based on these two examples, I need to be more discerning about what’s okay. I am not grateful for male attention. Delighted, possibly. Happy, maybe. Interested, yeah.

For those who find or who have found happiness in on-line coupling, mazel tov. For those who are looking for the Jerry Maguire-ish “you complete me” experience, I hope you find it. And if you have no problem with white bread, early dinners, or Fox News, the field is broad. This, my friends, is all about me. I’m not judging, but as a 74-year-old woman, I don’t think my tribe is being well represented…anywhere. Not even on the Advanced Style blog, which I adore. For what it’s worth, while I think the women Ari Seth Cohen features are marvelous, I can’t imagine taking the time to put those looks together, especially when there’s writing to do.

Aside from flunking on-line dating, I have an atypical story to tell about being old — atypical if you believe the current crop of reports on old people. As I mentioned, I’m a writer. I left a corporate job 21 years ago to go off on my own. Yes, it was gutsy and scary. That event coincided with my mother’s being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. A not very quiet voice inside my head told me, “This is not a long ride — and when you get to the end, you don’t want to say, ‘I wish I had [fill in the blank].” At one point in my solo career, I was doing a number of marketing related activities, but when I approached my 70th birthday, I gave myself the gift of dropping all but three favorite clients — and cutting back on the crazy amount of travel I was doing. I realized I didn’t need as much money as I was making, and that realization in itself was very liberating for someone who grew up under the influence of parents who had lived through the Great Depression.

I have two sons, four grandkids, a great daughter-in-law, two cats, and a universe of good friends spread around the globe. I taught college in the 60s — I was a very young teacher — and I joined with my students in protesting the Vietnam war and the inequities in our society. I was a geek before it was cool, particularly, to be a girl geek. I was singled out via a science test that was administered to all US kids (I assume) to find out who should major in science and math in high school (today’s incarnation is the STEM curriculum) so we could beat those pesky godless communists to the moon. I guess that part worked because we seem to have lost interest in godless communists, but somewhere in the middle of college, I realized no one asked me what I wanted to study, much less what I wanted to do when I left school. The first answer was easy — anything but what I was studying; the answer to the second question is still a WIP.

I am respected in my industry, I work with people of all ages, and I love what I do. I tell the young people who report to me not to be afraid to push back. Actually, I say, “you don’t even approach the level of crazy that I achieved by the time I was your age.”

Writing a first piece in a series, in my experience, is always tough. The best any writer can do is write it — and let it go. And promise to write more tomorrow. There is a whole tribe of old people who need a voice. Maybe mine will do it for them, for us.