Yes, the title of today’s RobZerrvation is a Jimmy Buffett song. And it serves today as the inspiration for a thoughtful piece on where I will be spending my golden years.<\/p>\n
Yeah, right!<\/p>\n
My son thinks he’s found it for me. We were in the car joking about how he would someday have the power over his mom and I on where we would be placed. He said something about how if his mother didn’t mind her P’s and Q’s in the coming years, he was going to put her in a home with a beautiful view of a cemetery. The “Doom and Gloom Estates” is where she would spend her last days.<\/p>\n
It was very funny. Now, before anyone sends me hate mail, his mother is an amazing woman and they have a fantastic relationship. But the Zerr boys have this odd sense of humor it seems, and he’s always giving me a run for my money.<\/p>\n
After running the course of the Doom and Gloom’s amenities the attention turned to where I would be going.<\/p>\n
He didn’t have a good answer, perhaps because he didn’t want to tell me to my face that I have a room reserved at the old Doom and Gloom, too.<\/p>\n
But that got me to thinking… where would I end up? I used to think I would end up next to the Ziffels in Melbourne. But as we know, that didn’t work out. I even went so far as to pick an old folk’s layout for the glorified trailer, with extra wide doors for walkers and wheelchairs and no stairs. Pretty smart, eh?<\/p>\n
I’m actually glad it worked out the way it did. I found out yesterday that even though there is still has almost $200,000 owed on it, is only worth $143,000 on the market. In the world of upside down real estate, that’s pretty bad. Even my childhood home, which is a 60-year old decrepit toilet now in Renton, is worth $100,000 more than this new home in Melbourne on the same acreage. I knew I should have bought my mom’s house.<\/p>\n
Of course, I live in old people central now. The condos that line North Hutchinson Island are mostly for the geriatric crowd. Even at 53, I’m still the young pup in the complex.<\/p>\n
I won’t always be, however, and since I rent. I know this won’t be the place that I end up taking “last call” at.<\/p>\n
I have since given the issue a lot of thought about my final resting place (in retirement). As a guy who writes for a living, I like most artists, am relatively poor. I am OK with this, mind you. I didn’t sell out to “the man” and I make a decent living in one of the best ways you can – by your wits. People pay me for what pours forth from my fertile mind, into my fingertips and onto the page. Pretty cool.<\/p>\n
This won’t last forever, however. I know this. Someday the old hands will be shaking so much that my brilliant piece of prose will look like this instead: O vsn drr yjsy O vsn’t y[ue yjod drmyrmve smu,pte.<\/p>\n
And it was such a good line, too.<\/p>\n
So I will be destined for a home somewhere. I originally thought it will be filled with old ladies who thought I was quite the catch. But do I really want a bunch of wrinkly old grandmas chasing after me down the hall in their walkers as I try in vain to find a safe place to hide, cursing all the while because I’ll have to miss the start of Bingo?<\/p>\n
I hope not. I don’t like Bingo. As an entertainer, I have been to a lot of nursing homes, assisted care centers and retirement villas over the years. So I have a good sense of what I like and don’t like.<\/p>\n
And then it dawned on me: The perfect place for me to retire and enjoy the golden years, growing old as a pirate, writer and bon vivant who led a gypsy life without a place to call my own.<\/p>\n
An Alzheimer’s Center. That’s right. The perfect place. Now, it would only be perfect if I didn’t have Alzheimer’s myself. If I did, then I guess it could still be the perfect place, I just wouldn’t know it was.<\/p>\n
If you’re assuming that I would like it because I could meet so many new people each day you’re wrong. I can’t remember people’s names now, so what’s really the difference? Famous people have walked right by me and I didn’t even know it (or really care).<\/p>\n
Remember, I still want my mental faculties. Everyone can have lost theirs, however. I told my son that all I want to go with me is one of my guitars and my iPad (or whatever they have in the long distant future that can hold all my songs).<\/p>\n
Every day I would entertain the Alzheimer’s patients. Hell, I don’t even need to be able to remember more than one or two songs by then. Each day they can hear the same songs I did the day before.<\/p>\n
And every day they will walk up to me and say: “Love your songs, thanks. Have we met before?”<\/p>\n
I have the perfect audience. No one ever bitching that I’ve done this or that song too many times. I can play a “Pirate Looks at 40” over and over again and my fans will adore me, at least for a moment or two before they have another senior moment.<\/p>\n
And then I can go into “I Have Found Me a Home”…<\/p>\n
The days drift by, they don’t have names, none of the streets here look the same…” <\/em><\/p>\n I think they call that a Silver Alert these days.<\/p>\n Out on the Treasure Coast trying to figure out the drum solo for In A Gada Da Vida so I can play it for the old people some day,<\/p>\n – Robb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yes, the title of today’s RobZerrvation is a Jimmy Buffett song. And it serves today as the inspiration for a thoughtful piece on where I will be spending my golden years. Yeah, right! My son thinks he’s found it for me. We were in the car joking about how he would someday have the power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-lessons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}