Okay, this is what happened. A senior citizen group invited me to join up and become a member. They meet five days a week from 8am till noon. The club is 20 miles away--they said not to worry they would send a van to pick me up and take me home. Great. I was one of the first to be picked up because I live farthest away so I had to be ready early. At 6:15 am this morning I was showered and powdered and dressed and here comes this frickin' city bus type vehicle up in the driveway. It was heavy and large and I had to point out to the driver where to back up so as to avoid running over my water pipes etc.

Passengers picked up along the way were all black people. Not that I mind at all about that. They all looked like the home health patients I had taken care of. Now this sounds snobby, but these folks are not in my social class. Oh go ahead and throw rotten tomatoes, I don't care. I mean there are stratas of class and you know it. For instance, I wouldn't feel at ease in teal's social group because they are different from me, in language, dress, travel--you know what I mean. I'm far down in the stratum, but still, I know I'm below teal and above the bus riders.

The bus ride itself was glum. Passengers sat staring out the windows. I was a chatterbox--lets talk about the news etc. Nope, no takers. Once again I chided myself for not taking my own car so I could leave when I wanted to. LESSON IMPRIMUS: ALWAYS TAKE YOUR OWN CAR. So we get there an hour later and everyone is seated in a large room and offered coffee and cookies by really nice personnel. I say to them why don't you put the coffee pot and snacks and cups and creamer etc. on a rolling cart and bring it out to the folks, instead of the majority of cane, wheelchair etc. people having to go down a hall and to the kitchen to get it? Bring it to them. Roll that cart by every 20 minutes or so. They gave me a look. I'm familiar with that look.

Then we were served breakfast, 2 small pancakes and a link of breakfast sausage. Men sat at one table, women at another, and the odd thing was the chairs faced the wall, so the men sat looking at one wall, and we with our backs to them were looking at the opposite wall. It was a teeny dose of what prison must be like. Then it was do as you please activity time. I'd have liked if everyone could have gotten together to sing or something. Mostly everyone just sat around. The club was wanting to keep men and women's activities separate for whatever reason. So when the ladies were being shown how to roll out biscuit dough to make little pizzas, I went instead to a table where men were playing dominoes and joined them, then we played cards. I enjoyed that. I figured by this time that the club was gonna exit me or I was gonna kick myself out, so what the hell.


Next up, the director presented six high school seniors who arrived, with laundry baskets filled with supplies to start their dorm life with. I stopped one of the employees and asked who chose the seniors and why were they all black? Oh Oh. The ruffled feathers employee came at our lunch of hot dog and English peas and announced some question had been raised about the gift baskets, and there had been one white kid there, I hadn't seen him. I watched as a dining companion laboriously chased English peas over her plate, sticking a tine in on one at a time.
Well, it was quite a day and I've been dis-welcomed to other social groups, and may not be welcome to this one again. Se la vie.

susil