Chapter 5, Part 6 - The Activities

The aerobics exercisers are a relatively small group at Harbor View, understandably, as the average age of residents is 74. It seems to be more popular with the newer residents, those who are generally between the ages of 55 and 64, for reasons that need no explaining here.

This group consists of hard-core exercisers, most of whom are women. Mom’s friend Flo belongs to this group. The aerobics fiends have an array of opportunities open to them. There are classes at the clubhouse morning, noon, and night. There is ‘wake-up’ aerobics at the clubhouse every morning at 6:30; low impact aerobics at mid-morning; step aerobics in early afternoon; water aerobics in late afternoon; and abs and thighs at night. I say kudos to these women. If everyone at Harbor View (or in all of Florida, for that matter) took as good care of their bodies as this group, the state might shed its image as one whose residents are old, overweight people who sit by the pool all day playing Mah Jongg. You can usually figure out which women are the hard-core aerobics people by listening to their conversations at the pool.

“What’d you think of that new instructor at ‘wake-up’ aerobics this morning?” one woman asks another.

“Too skinny and she moved too fast. What does she think, she’s instructing college kids?”

“So should we try her again tomorrow or should we do water aerobics instead?”

“No water aerobics for me; you know that the water messes up my hair color. Last time I went in the pool, my hair came out looking green.”

If you do not overhear the women speaking, you can often spot an aerobics person by her clothing. She is usually sporting leggings or shorts with a large t-shirt and sneakers, and bright-colored headband on her hair. She wears this outfit wherever she goes – whether she is on her way to an aerobics workout class or not.

Chapter 5, Part 5 - The Activities

Mah Jongg is an ancient Chinese game played with tiles. If most of the men came to Harbor View to play golf, then most of the women came for Mah Jongg. About twenty percent of all Harbor View residents play Mah Jongg – 1,999 women and one man. This group is a serious bunch. Most are content playing Mah Jongg from morning to night. They can be heard at the pool clicking their tiles and saying what sounds like directions to the nearest Chinese restaurant, “First right, across, first left, second left, across, last right.” You can see them in the clubhouse walking toward the game room with their Mah Jongg cases in hand. And you can hear them in the apartment below you, gossiping until the wee hours of the night as they play.

The Mah Jongg players are the most overtly identifiable group. They wear Mah Jongg tiles made of 14K gold around their necks and carry key rings made up of Mah Jongg symbols. If you are visiting a Mah Jongg player in her apartment, she will have pictures of her grandchildren framed in Mah Jongg tiles.

Each December a group of Mah Jongg players from Harbor View takes a Mah Jongg cruise, where players from across the country compete for the title of ‘Mah Jongg Champion’ (and a nice cash prize, too, of course). Losers get yet another Mah Jongg memento.

Chapter 5, Part 4 - The Activities

The tennis players are an interesting group. They are a much smaller club – only about 5 percent of Harbor View residents play tennis. Tennis players are an easy group to identify, too. You can tell they feel they don’t quite live up to the golfers. If you meet a person for the first time and want to know if they play tennis, just ask them, “So you play golf?” and if they answer, “No, I wouldn’t waste my time; I like athletic sports,” you know that you have just met a tennis player.

Chapter 5, Part 3 - The Activities

As I just mentioned, there are hundreds of clubs at Harbor View from book clubs to Yiddish clubs. All of these activities can be classified into the serious clubs and the ‘I’m not into anything serious, so I’ll join one of these’ clubs. Golf, tennis, and Mah Jongg are considered serious clubs. French, knitting, and ping-pong are not. The serious clubs are a big deal at Harbor View. In fact, some people retire to Harbor View for the sole reason of joining one of these clubs. The residents at Harbor View become so caught up in the clubs they’ve joined that one of the more noteworthy observations I have made about the retirees there is that you can easily identify which club most of them belong to without asking them directly.

First, there are the golfers. They are by far the largest group. Fully one-quarter of Harbor View residents are golfers. Now, because men die younger than women, most Harbor View residents are women; yet nearly all of the golfers are men. Which means statistically, if you are a man and you live at Harbor View, you either came to live at Harbor View because, like Dad, your wife dragged you or you came to play golf.

The golfers are an easy group to identify. You would think you’d be able to identify the golfers by the clothes they wear – plaid pants landing three inches above their white shoes, bright-colored shirts, and derby hats. But frankly, at Harbor View that’s not too different from what the rest of the residents wear.

Actually, the best way to figure out which residents are the golfers is to figure out which residents are not the golfers. For example, if you see Sheldon at the pool at 1:00 in the afternoon you can bet that Sheldon is not a golfer. If Marty calls you at 10:30 in the morning and asks you to head over to the clubhouse with him, you can take your odds that he is not a golfer. And if you run into Jack at the supermarket at lunchtime you can guess that Jack’s not a golfer either. (None of this holds true if it’s raining outside, however, then there is a chance that these men are golfers.) See, the fact is, if someone is a golfer, you will usually not see him until after two in the afternoon when the Florida sun makes it too hot for him to play. Dad is a member of the golfers’ group, although I do not think he is quite as serious as most of the other players since, unlike them, he does not play every day. Most of the golfers do not miss a day on the course unless it’s raining.

Chapter 5, Part 2 - The Activities

On my first visit to Harbor View, Dad brought me by the clubhouse to show me the beautiful indoor pool. We were fully clothed and not carrying any gym bags. We were obviously not there to go swimming.

“Please, sir,” Dad pleaded with the guard, “I just want to show her the pool; we are not going to be swimming” (as if I would want to swim in a pool with wrinkled, hairy, old men with names like Marvin and Harry).

“Sorry,” the guard said, “she needs a pass even just to look at the pool.”

“What about the bathroom?” Dad continued, “Can she just use the bathroom?”

“Nope, sorry, sir; she needs a pass to pee, too.”

We ended up caving in and buying a pass later that day just so I could look around the clubhouse. I saw old men playing pool, couples playing bridge, and women knitting sweaters. I even saw old women with sagging skin jumping around in brightly colored leotards and body suits doing aerobics to the sounds of Yanni – the musician most people listen to for relaxing and unwinding.

In addition to the aerobics room and card room there was the aforementioned indoor pool, a 1,000-seat theatre, a dance floor, a bocce court, a ceramics studio, a woodworking room, a library, and a wall with a list of activities a mile long. I wish they had offered me this many activities in my single days. Aerobics, bridge, calligraphy, drawing, egg decorating, French, guitar, handicraft, Indian cooking, Japanese bunka, karate, lapidary, mambo, nature lovers, origami, pinochle, quadrille, Russian, salsa, tea making, underwater dancing, violin, water aerobics, yoga, and zoology were some of the more than 100 clubs listed. I was very impressed by all of the activities I saw going on, but I still didn’t know if it was worth the $3 it cost to get in. Then I remembered the sight of the old ladies with the skin on their arms flapping as they jumped around to Yanni and concluded that it was money well spent.

Chapter 5, Part 1 - The Activities

Harbor View is such a vast place that the condo development offers every activity imaginable to man, woman, and senior citizen. There are an 18-hole golf course, three pools, a few lakes for fishing, and the clubhouse. What the condo buildings lack in character, the clubhouse makes up for with its beauty. It is a grand, exquisite building with white columns and a circular drive leading up to the entrance. It is pictures of the clubhouse that they put in all of those glossy brochures used to sell the condos. (Funny, I never saw any wheelchairs in those brochures.)

Once inside the lobby of the clubhouse, you see a beautiful crystal chandelier and yards of red carpet. That is if you can get inside. They guard the clubhouse as if it were the Holy Grail. Big, young security guards, who are completely unlike the little, old guard at the entrance gate, protect it. (I suppose the higher-ups at Harbor View think they will taunt would-be trespassers by letting them into the development grounds but then stopping them at the clubhouse. I have no idea why.) Only residents with valid Harbor View ID cards and guests with a current visitor’s pass ($3 daily, $7.50 weekly) can get inside. Otherwise you do not enter, no exceptions, period. They mean business here. You have to wonder if there is more going on inside the clubhouse doors than water aerobics and ping-pong.

Chapter 4, Part 5 - Condo Rules And Regs.

Filling out an application and getting character references was a piece of cake, however, compared to the condo board interview, Mom tells me. “There were three men and two women seated at a long table. Each one wore an official badge on that said ‘Building 51 Condo Board’ across it. What they should have had on were military fatigues,” Mom said. She informed me that around Harbor View the nickname for the condo board members are the ‘Condo Commandos.’ “None of them smiled, and they shot us questions down the line like they were a firing squad.”

Questions such as (Mom and Dad’s answers appear in parenthesis; my comments on their answers appear in brackets.):

--Why do you want to live in Harbor View? (Well, before we started this whole application process, we thought it would be a nice place to live in our old age.) [And why didn’t you change your mind after this ludicrous interrogation?]

--If you saw a neighbor having visitors in her condo without condo association permission, would you report her to the condo board? (Yes, of course.) [I have visited Mom and Dad at least three times without prior association permission.]

--Will you keep your business to yourselves and not involve yourself in others’ affairs? (Yes, we are quiet people and are not interested in others’ business.) [Mom and Dad gossip at the pool each day with their friends.]

--Do you ever plan on renting out the unit? (Perhaps down the road if God forbid one of us should die.) [Isn’t that inevitable, Mom?]

--We like our residents to be active. Will you be joining a minimum of three activities each? (Of course, that’s why we’re retiring here – for all of the activities.) [To date, Mom has joined just one activity.]

When Mom and Dad finally got the approval from the Building 51 Condo Association, they called me up very excited.

“We were approved!” they screamed into the telephone.

“Congratulations!” I said aloud into the phone. To myself I added, “If you still want to live there after all of those questions they asked you, then I think you’ll fit right in.”
Then I added out loud, “But please, Dad,” I pleaded, “Do the family a favor, don’t run for a position on the Condo Board.”