Growing Old Isn't So Bad After All

The building where we are staying here in Daytona Beach offered a craft class yesterday afternoon to off set the cold weather. I had nothing to do, so I sauntered in. The paper posted in the hallway said the class would be painting bird houses. I got there only to be told I was supposed to have signed up the day before.  Since I hadn't, I would not get a bird house!!!  There were not enough to go around. I apologized for being so thoughtless (I hadn't read the small print about signing up.) As I was about to leave, the director said, "you can stay, but you'll have to paint a box."  I really had my heart set on painting a bird house, but, hey, if all they had was a box, so be it! :-)

She held a plastic tub filled with acrylic paints asking which ones I wanted her to put on my styrofoam plate. I was afraid to ask for too many, since I hadn't signed up, so I requested only two: black and white.  She carefully squeezed the bottles as the paint blurped onto my makeshift palet.

The man across  the table was busy painting his bird house with brilliant colors. He welcomed me to the table by asking, "where are you from?" When I told him, he aked  "What do you do back in Cincinnati?  "I'm retired," I said as I glanced over at his blue and lime green bird house thinking how nice it looked.  "What did you do before you retired?" he asked.  I wasn't eager to tell him since I was engaging in a very elementary form of what I once did as a profession. "I worked as an artist," I said reluctantly. "Oh," he said in an excited voice, "No wonder you make such nice dots."  I suddenly realized I was in a place I'd never been before: in an old-folks craft class painting dots!  I decided growing old isn't so bad after all.