(“FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE,” KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN, 3/20/06)

“I was in touch with some residents who will have dinner with you,” said Corrine, my concert organizer, “if that’s okay with you.”

“Sounds great.”

“They’re eating at four forty-five, which is,” she looked at her watch, “now.”

“That’ll work.”

Corrine led me to a table in the cafeteria where three older women sat.  They all had white hair and wore robes, and one of them had a walker that doubled somehow as a chair.  She shouted at me from across the table.  “You think you can handle three women?”

“I’ll try.”

During dinner the ladies, all born and raised in or around Kalamazoo, enlightened me on life in a retirement community.  When one of them mentioned that women far outnumbered the men at Friendship Village, the lady next to me nudged my side and smirked.  “The men die sooner.” 

“But that means they have more of us to choose from!” one lady said. 

“I think their days of choosing are long gone,” her neighbor answered.

“There are some couples,” the woman next to me argued.  ”More than before.”

“Are there any troublemakers?” I asked.

“Besides us?” someone joked.

“No, not really,” one of them said.  “Friendship Village is pretty selective of who lives here.  We had one woman who started acting… erratically.”  Everyone at the table nodded in acknowledgment.

“Like how?” I asked.

“Just aggressive.”

“To the other residents, or the staff?’

“To everybody.  Anyway, they had her removed.  That’s what they do if someone starts acting out.”  My eyes widened.  “No, it’s no big deal.  They just put her in the psych ward.”           

I excused myself and started to get up when the most soft-spoken of the group asked quietly, “Are you not getting anything from the dessert bar?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.  ”I should really practice for tonight.”

“But I only ordered my sugar-free vanilla ice cream because I thought you were having dessert, too,” she said.  I sat down and promptly ordered some ice cream, and as I did, she confided to the lady beside her, trying to conceal her words from me, “I just thought he was going to stay.  He really didn’t need to order the sugar-free vanilla ice cream.”