The Middle School Mean Girls Club is Very Much Alive in Adulthood

Volunteering at a local senior citizen center has become an unexpected delight.

I say unexpected because I was content with my lazy Thursday mornings and my maybe I’ll exercise but I’ll probably eat bacon and watch Perry Mason for the next hour routine.  

Then, a friend who had been volunteering at the senior center mentioned they were looking for help. So it wasn’t exactly an unselfish situation where I went  I have this empty space in my life and want to give back to my community and hmmmmm….what can I do about that?  

It was more like This doesn’t sound like it will take much of my time, and I might get a few cookies out of it, so I’ll give it a try.

The job they needed me for was to pick up donated baked goods at a local grocery store one day a week and drop them off at the center. The whole process would take about 30 minutes so I said Sure! Sign me up!

I’ve been the senior citizen center's baked-goods-drop-off-lady for about 18 months and enjoy it. I am a little more involved than I was when I started and most of my time at the center is lovely.

The routine goes like this: On Thursday mornings, I pick up boxes of cookies, cakes, pies, and breads at the loading dock behind the grocery store, shove them in my car, and drive to the center. I put the long French bread in a basket by the front door, where everyone who visits is welcome to take a loaf home. Then I carry the other boxes to the commercial kitchen, where the cookies will be a morning snack for the seniors, and the cakes and pies will awarded as bingo prizes later in the day.

Over the weeks that task expanded to setting up the chairs and equipment for the chair exercise class, staying for the class, assisting a few people with mobility issues, and helping to put away the equipment afterward.

After chair exercise class, the seniors break into groups and play dominos, eat snacks, and socialize in the rec room until entertainment arrives or it’s lunchtime.  

Oh, those sweet older people! 

I think I may have put my hand over my heart and told another volunteer how thrilled I was to be around their gentle souls and wisdom. She was kind enough not to drop to the floor in hysterical laughter. A few minutes later, a noisy fight broke out over a bookmark, and another woman was loudly told she wasn’t welcome to sit at a certain table and have a sweet treat from the plate being passed around.

I’ve learned something important about women since I began hanging around at the senior center, and it is this: There will be a mean girl's table and a handful of Queen Bees who are intensely intimidating for social hierarchy reasons at any age. 

Adult mean girls - correction, ALL mean girls - engage in hen-pecking where some women are chosen to be in the inner circle at the top, and some women are regulated to the middle, where they can either be permitted into the inner circle or cast aside, depending on their level of butt-kissing. Some women will always be excluded completely.

I’m not lying when I say I was shocked by this.

The naive human that I am always believed - and don't laugh too hard when you read this - that each of us would eventually have an epiphany or a lightbulb moment where we go, “I’ve been acting like a b**ch and occasionally channeling my middle-school self. I need to be more aware and stop that.”

My lightbulb moment might occur at age 65, and yours might occur at age 51, but we will all eventually learn enough life lessons, figure it out, and spend our twilight years treating others how we want to be treated. So it was a shock to see octogenarian ladies behaving like middle schoolers at the senior center, where I thought the vibe would be all kumbaya.  

Not very fetch, if you ask me. 

And what is the harm in letting Betty or whoever sit across from you at a table while you offer her a cookie?

Most of the seniors at the center are kind and gentle, with not a nasty bone in their bodies. Occasionally, I've witnessed a few other women try to eat them alive. Some can be noisy and rude and require a good old-fashioned shhh-ing, although that’s on a bad day. 

I find myself mingling on a good day, especially now that I know most of the regulars. I’ll chitchat here and there, ask someone what they did over the weekend, and so on.

I like chair exercise class, when I sit in the back of the room and joke with the two women beside me. One is normally quiet but funny when she thinks no one can hear, and the other is a 92-year-old snappy dresser who wears bright red lipstick, an armful of bracelets, and whose favorite song is Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis.

It is a joy to spend my Thursday mornings that way, and I am grateful for it.

But as I observe some of the social crap unfolding in ways that are a reminder of my middle school (high school, college, PTA, and occasionally current) life I can see how insignificant that behavior is.

If I could go back in time, I would convince my younger self that there is almost nothing less important than worrying about what other people think. All you need to do is wake up each day, do what brings you joy, and treat others the way you want to be treated. It's so simple, yet so difficult.

Aging is such a strange mix of loss, gain, wisdom, and staying the same, don’t you think?