Floatin’ With the Oldies

One day, I took the plunge and gazed into a murky, uncertain future.

The surface of the chlorinated pool water, just moments earlier an undulating silver-blue mirror, bubbled and frothed as I – along with a gaggle of fellow bobbing oldsters – energetically rotated my arms in circular motions through the liquid resistance. We were partaking in Senior Splash, an aqua aerobics class for active retirees.

Some of the participants smiled. Others held stern looks of determination.

Me? I was ready to exit the pool. Some 20 minutes earlier, I’d literally immersed myself in my future … and that future looked mighty bleak.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself.

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A few weeks earlier, I’d sat at my desk, once again failing to focus on a manuscript. Perhaps it was the sterile cubicle maze I shared with my fellow editors. It could’ve been the windowless, industrial blue walls or the soul-sucking fluorescent lights. Or maybe the problem was in my noggin.

For whatever reason, my mind tended to drift while on the job. I’d occasionally nod off … or make inexplicable errors … or leave my six-by-nothing cube to wander around the office. (Thank goodness I was a copy editor and not, say, an air traffic controller.)

Earlier that day, I’d stumbled across an online ad touting the benefits of joining the AARP. These included can’t-miss discounts on Dentu-Creme, 365-day pill organizers, those goofy walk-in bathtubs and, if memory serves, Apple’s “Magnify Everything” package.

Then it dawned on me: Uh-oh. I’m officially a senior citizen.

Sure, I’d been contacted by the AARP some four years earlier. (How they managed to locate someone in the U.S. Federal Witness Protection Program is anyone’s guess.) But I’d never really pondered what life would be like as a Full-Blown Codger™.

Now, slumping in my office chair, ponder I did. And it scared the hell out of me.

I envisioned years of early-afternoon TV dinners; tedious, bicker-filled Scrabble marathons; evenings snoring in front of low-def ‘70s game shows, played at 100 decibels due to high-deaf ears; and far too many trips to the local podiatrist. (Those toenails weren’t going to trim themselves).

Fate intervened the following week, when Tim, a rail-thin Gen-X writer with a collection of Hawaiian-print ties and a discomfiting eye tick, told me about Senior Splash, a local water-exercise class geared for fogies. I saw it as an opportunity to literally dip my toes into the waters of an uncertain future.

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As the Big Day approached, I pictured myself surrounded by a group of seniors, all of them cackling away about D-Day or the advent of indoor plumbing or whatever. And I grew a tad concerned at the prospect of repeatedly getting kneed in the nether regions by cellulite- and varicose vein–covered legs, or karate-chopped in the neck by an overly enthusiastic fossil flailing away to a disco tune.

Then I figured: Live on the edge, baby. Go for it.

This is NOT the essay’s esteemed, dignified author, photographed in Irvine, California, by Churm Media graphic designer extraordinaire Luke Adam Hodsdon (photo credit). Rather, it’s a randomly chosen stock photo of a normal, conventional male, who just happens to be a dead ringer for Brad Pitt rocking a fabulous, to-die-for bathing cap.

I checked into the city of Irvine’s Woollett Aquatics Center on a sunny Wednesday morning, changed into Spiderman board shorts and shuffled toward the pool. There, I strapped a blue flotation device to my chest and grabbed two Styrofoam dumbbells designed to provide underwater resistance.

Anticipating the Big Event, I’d undergone an upper-body wax job the previous day. Why? Most of the folks in my end of the gene pool are living, breathing reminders that evolution is a fact, not a theory. Given our hirsute appearance, I’d always found it easy to picture all four grandparents falling out of fig trees and hobbling their way to the nearest cave, where they proceeded to capture lizards and discover fire.

My maternal grandmother. She loved baking and mah jongg.

Oh sure, the wax job had hurt like the dickens, but the pain ended the shame of having total strangers at the local beach check my hands for opposable thumbs or offer me fruit. “Don’t look straight at it,” a concerned father might warn his kids. “It might take that as a sign of aggression.”

Anyway, my newly bald bod proudly gleaming in the mid-afternoon sunlight, I entered the pool and crab-paddled with the others toward the deep end. Minutes later, a young, perky woman (my guess is that I owned underwear older than her parents), fired up a boom box. I expected a tune preferred by the denture-clacking set, like “Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits” – “hits” referring to Uncle Frankie’s reputed ties with organized crime. However, a high-energy Beyoncé tune got us moving.

As we flailed our way through a variety of resistance exercises that gave our grease-clogged tickers a nice jumpstart, I spotted a fellow 60-something hitting me with his best stink-eye. I could tell this wasn’t his first chlorinated rodeo, no siree. His sour expression seemed to say, Get off my turf, Bucko. Find your own pool.

Then it occurred to me: He wasn’t there to burn calories. Seeking an early retirement, this poor sap was trolling for a Sugar Mama.

I immediately pictured Loverboy grinning like a Cheshire cat as he fell backward in slow motion onto a king-sized (adjustable) bed that had been covered with diamonds and $100 bills. The odds were in his favor, since I counted about 15 women and only four males thrashing away in the pool. (And the other two dudes appeared to be Civil War veterans; no competition there.)

Maybe he’s on to something, I thought as I considered my near-empty nest egg at the time: little more than fistfuls of $10 and $20 bills stuffed into a cigar box.

That wasn’t the only thing that seemed empty.

Taking in my fellow oldsters, I began to wonder what kind of lives they’d led prior to this moment: their wins and loves and losses; their dreams, fulfilled or forever deferred; their aching regrets. Scissor-kicking and shifting to a new arm movement, I found myself pondering what meaning or purpose they might’ve developed during their lives.

“Purpose” and “meaning” had never been in my vocabulary. No real dreams, no loves, no losses … just a long series of bleak memories that, at the moment, translated into an equally bleak future.

That’s when I decided to quit and began to crab-paddle away from the group.

I wanted out of the pool … out of everything.

“Keep at it!” a voice to my left bellowed. “You got this!”

It was Loverboy, the guy who I thought had given me the stink eye. With an encouraging smile, he nodded in my direction.

“Name’s Phil,” he added. “C’mon, work with me! Let’s crank this out together!”

Phil and I fell into a shared rhythm. Maybe it was an endorphin rush. Maybe it was my buddy. But I soon began to feel better. Life, at least at that moment, was okay.

That’s when it dawned on me: I didn’t need any Grand, World-Changing Purpose. Maybe all the Life Affirming Meaning I needed came from that very moment, in that sunny pool session.

And who knows? Perhaps my future was – and is – composed of singular, present-time moments to notice, to appreciate, to savor.

Senior Splash ended sooner than I’d expected. As my fellow soaked seniors and I exited the pool, I turned to my new friend.

“Thank you, Phil,” I said. “I needed that.”

“Stick with it,” he replied. “See you soon.”

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Before Senior Splash, I’d thought that exercising with a bunch of kibitzing oldsters would be torturous. I’ve never been more wrong.

Maybe you see your own future as a time of decline and loss. But aging can be rooted in positive human qualities: community, vitality, humor and – despite a certain shameless writer rocking a pink bathing cap – even dignity.

Why fret over the future, when our Almighty Grand Purpose is there for the taking, in every present moment? And how the hell is that not meaningful?

Speaking personally, who knows? If I show up to Senior Splash on a regular basis, I could meet $Miss Right$ – and I’ll be the one slow-falling onto a bed covered in cash and diamonds.

That, at the very least, is a future worth pondering.

Kudos to the fabulous folks in my Write Hearted community, for their valuable feedback and encouragement as this essay was bubbling to the surface: Matt Cyr, Rick Lewis, Dana Allen, Kathy Ayers, Alden Cox and Linda Kaun. Y’all can jump into the pool with me any time!