HOLLY NADLER

508-274-2329

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

So last Thursday I was talking to my old friend, Dolly Campbell, who oversees operations at the Thrift Store in Vineyard Haven. On Thursdays a 20 per cent discount is offered to persons 55 and older. I noticed Dolly was extra sweet and tactful about asking people if they qualified: “Are you, uh, of an age where, um, the discount applies?”

This process of age-assessing is so different on the older end of the spectrum. For younger folk in liquor stores the clerk gets all bristly and demands to see some identification. But with the old goops of the world, even the ones who look like younger goops, you want a senior discount, you got it. In fact, it’s a little mortifying that no one challenges you, “Come on, you’re not a senior. Let me see your driver’s license.” (I’ve always thought a great birthday present would involve being in cahoots with a waiter who asks to see Granny’s license to check if she’s old enough to order that dry martini with a twist.)

Well, Dolly and I, perhaps because our names rhyme, have always enjoyed sprightly conversations where we try to fix the problems of, not only the world, but the whole wide galaxy itself (we’re trying to get the Big Dipper to line up with greater precision). On this particular Thursday it occurred to us that a new word was needed to express elderliness; something cool, something catchy.

Senior is out unless it describes your hierarchy in a corporation and entitles you to bigger bucks. No one wants to be called “old” and boomer has lost its charm because nowadays it’s always preceded by the word “aging” as in “Aging boomers are overloading the health care system.” Well, good golly Ms. Dolly and Holly, we decided not to leave the subject until we came up with a better term for our generation. Who cares if we’re aging? We’re still the biggest bulge in the population, and in our own inimitable way, we still rock, so we can continue to influence the culture in ways above and beyond overloading the health care system.

Dolly and I started to play with the radio disk jockey chestnut, “Oldies but goodies.” Certainly we weren’t going to call ourselves oldies, but goodies sounded, well, good! Dolly experimented with it at the counter, asking customers, “Are you a goodie?” Surprisingly, it took only a second for people to figure our what she meant, and they eagerly claimed the title.

So I’m a goodie, are you a goodie? What I like about it is that it doesn’t imply the old gag-me “Goody-Two-shoes.” We’re just goodies. We grooved to a lot of great music in the 60s and 70s, we wore luridly-colored clothes and beads and danced at love-ins, we helped to end a war, we grew up and had children, many of us on the late side (yeah, we’re a generation that took longer than necessary to mature, but for the most part we were good parents who laughed a lot with our kids), we’re the first group in society to find it perfectly natural to change careers nineteen times, we’re still intent on improving the world and ourselves and, with any luck and hard work, evolving just an itty-bitty bit . . . or more . . . or not. We’ll have to see. But in the meantime, we’re goodies. We’ve earned it. And it just sounds cool when Dolly says it. So don’t forgot to go for your goodie discount on Thursdays at the Thrift Shop.

My sister-in-town-gab, Bettye Baker, is going to be delayed getting on Island: She busted her platform patella, otherwise known to us medical nincompoops as the kneecap. She fell in church and says there are some humorous elements to it, so clearly her attitude has a typical Bettye optimism to it. In any event, if there’s anything you normally report to Ms. Baker about upcoming summer events, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll be a goodie about putting it in the column. In fact, for Bettye’s sake, I promise to be goodier than I normally am about these things.

Just a reminder for anyone wishing to get into food service, the following course is a must. I attended it myself in the fall of 2007 when I decided to serve coffee and cookies at my bookstore. It took me weeks to stop annoying my friends by saying stuff like, “This chicken has only 27 more minutes to sit out on the counter.” So here goes: The next ServSafe Food Safety Sanitation certification and recertification classes at Adult and Community Education of MV (ACE MV) will be June 22.

Preregistration is required (online or mail), as spots fill quickly. For more information call ACE MV 508-693-1033 extension 240, or 774-310-1131 or e-mail lynn@acemv.org. More details and registration online at acemv.org.