Hello and welcome! We are Dudley and Judy Goodman. Dudley is 65 and retired in 1996 after thirty-three years at an auto plant in Lansing, Michigan. Judy is 62 and retired from the bank in 1997, where she was a teller for twenty-four years and never once came up short. (She would like that on the record.)

We spend the summers in our house outside Lansing and the winters in our park-model home in Mesa, Arizona, with about four hundred other people from Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa and Canada who had the same idea. We leave for Mesa on Saturday, October 9. Dudley has had the car packed since Labor Day.

The type on this page is BIG on purpose. You're welcome.

Our son gave us this computer last Christmas, and the grandkids taught us how to use it, mostly by sighing. One night in Mesa this winter we started a list at the kitchen table, and it got longer every time one of us did something dumb, which was often. So here it is.

You know you're getting older when...

...you drive twelve miles out of your way to save forty cents on a dozen eggs.
...he tells everybody in the park about the forty cents and nobody about the gas.

...your idea of a big Saturday night is the early-bird special at 4:30, and getting a booth.
...he calls 4:30 "supper" and 8:00 "the middle of the night."

...you and the car both need new shocks and you can only afford one set, so you pick the car.
...I'd pick the car too. At least the car would stop making that noise.

...you hang your glasses on a cord around your neck so you'll never lose them again.
...and then the two of you spend twenty minutes looking for them while they're hanging around your neck.

...you get winded playing shuffleboard, and it isn't even your turn.
...you're the shuffleboard champion of the whole park and you still have to sit down between ends. (That's me. I'll take it.)

...the grandkids ask what you did for fun before computers, and you say, "We talked."
...he says "We talked," and then doesn't say another word all afternoon because the Lions are on.

...your pill box has more little compartments than your tackle box.
...and you keep them both on the kitchen counter, and one morning in June he went to take his vitamins and opened the wrong one. He stood there looking at a box of rubber worms for a long time before he said anything.

...you go to the bank where your wife worked twenty-four years and the new girl asks HER for identification.
...I showed it to her, too, and I wasn't even a little bit sore about it. Much.

...the kids give you a computer for Christmas and the grandkids have to show you where the "on" button is.
...it takes him three weeks to find the "on" button and three minutes to find the card games.

...you need a nap to get over your nap.
...your nap has a regular time and a name. Ours is called "the six o'clock news."

...you can name every car the plant ever built, by year, and you can't name the grandkids' dog.
...it's Rocket. It's been Rocket for four years. He calls it "Buddy." The dog comes anyway.

...you have to stop at every rest area between Lansing and Mesa.
...we have a favorite rest area. In Oklahoma. We've taken pictures of it.

1. The Golden Age Passport. Ten dollars, one time, when you turn 62, and it gets you into every national park in the country for the rest of your life, along with whoever's in the car with you. Dudley got his the week he turned 62. Judy got hers in March. We have been to the Grand Canyon three times on Dudley's alone, so hers is mostly for show. It's still the best ten dollars either of us ever spent.

2. Senior coffee. A bottomless cup at the hamburger place on the corner for less than a newspaper costs. The fellows from the park meet there every morning at 6:30 to solve the world's problems. So far they've solved none, but the coffee's good.

3. The early-bird special. Dinner before five, with soup or salad, a main dish, two sides and pie, for less than lunch. We used to laugh at our parents for this. Now we are our parents, and we get a booth.

4. The Tuesday matinee. Half off at the movie house if you're over 60. We saw two pictures this year. Dudley slept through one of them. Judy won't say which.

5. Senior rate at the golf course. Weekday mornings only. Dudley's score has not gone down, but at least it costs less to shoot it.

6. Senior day at the grocery. Five percent off on Wednesdays. We go on Wednesdays now. So does every other person over 60 in the state of Arizona. Bring a lunch.

7. The card from the mail. It came the week Dudley turned 50 and he threw it away. It came again the next year and he threw it away again. He joined at 55. He says it's for the magazine.

8. The one nobody asked for. A young fellow at a store in Michigan gave Judy the senior discount when she was 55, without asking a thing. Ranked last. She has not been back. Dudley thought it was the funniest thing that happened all year, and he's still paying for it.

MOUSE. Used to be: something you set a trap for in the garage every November. Now: something the grandkids say Grandpa is holding upside down.

SURF. Used to be: what those boys in California did on the television. Now: what Judy does on the computer after supper while the phone line's tied up and the kids can't get through.

WEB. Used to be: what Dudley walked face-first into every morning going out to the shed. Now: the place Judy found three recipes for date bars and the weather in Mesa.

CHIP. Used to be: something you put dip on, or something in the windshield from a gravel truck. Now: the thing inside the computer that was the newest one when our son bought it last Christmas and isn't anymore.

MEMORY. Used to be: something we were losing. Now: something the computer needs more of too. At least the computer can buy some.

VIRUS. Used to be: something you caught from the grandkids. Now: something the computer catches from the grandkids, off a game disk.

WINDOW. Used to be: something you washed in the spring. Now: something you have to close, and there are always nine of them open.

CRASH. Used to be: a sound at the plant that made everybody look up. Now: what the computer does every time Dudley tries to print.

COOKIE. Used to be: in the jar. Now: also in the computer, and you can't eat those. We checked with the grandkids. Twice.

Kristin, 14: You know you're getting older when you print out your e-mail so you can read it in your chair.

Jeremy, 12: You know you're getting older when you call every video game "the Nintendo," even when it's a PlayStation.

Kristin, 14: You know you're getting older when you call my CD player "the record player."

Jermaine, 7: You know you're getting older when you HAVE to take a nap and nobody even makes you.

Jeremy, 12: You know you're getting older when you ask me to set the clock on the VCR, and then you ask me again in the spring, and again in the fall.

Grandpa's answer: You know you're getting older when the grandkids are funnier than you are. Okay, kids. You win this round.

Grandma's answer: And you know you're getting older when you love every minute of it anyway.