Essay
Retirement and Line Dancing
by Irwin Lengel (Lakeland, FL, USA)
How many of us really know what we want or expect retirement to be like?
While I can remember wanting to be able to retire early in life, I never really gave any thought to what I wanted to do once I did leave my work for good. We all have those long lists of “honey, do’s and odd jobs” that keep being pushed aside until tomorrow. But how long will they take? How long does it take to fix a creaky floor, tighten up some loose hinges, or paint the shed in the back yard? Six months? Nine months? Eventually they will be done – and that begs the question, what do you do next?
I do not recall exactly how long it took me after I retired to realize that I should have had a plan. It’s amazing. I've spent my life working and teaching and I can remember telling both my co-workers and students: make a plan and work your plan! But, I failed to make a plan myself when it came to my own retirement. Someone once mentioned to me that a person should have three – not one – working hobbies the day they retire. By working hobbies, I mean something that they are passionate about and that will consume their days. Having more than one provides diversity and will help occupy those hours previously spent traveling to and from work.
This was not the case with me. First, my retirement was not planned. It was part of that overall scheme of things called “downsizing.” After twenty-five years with the same employer and aged 55, as much as I wanted to retire, mentally I was not ready. Fortunately, I was able to secure another job. I figured I could work for another five to seven years and then give up work. But that wasn’t in the cards. Nine months later (no, my wife did not have another baby), my new employer also embarked upon a downsizing plan. Anyone out there remember the accounting terms LIFO and FIFO? Well, LIFO applied here. You guessed it, just my luck, “Last In, First Out”! So, what did we do, you ask? We took this second downsizing as a sign. It was our time to retire and we are happy to say we haven’t looked back once, nor regretted our decision to hang it all up in our mid-fifties.
The timing was right as retirement enabled us to downsize ourselves into a smaller home and move to a different locale, closer to my wife’s parents, where we were able to spend some quality time with them before they passed. This brings me to another fact of retirement we rarely give sufficient thought to − or perhaps some of you have. Where does one retire to? Do we move closer to our parents, assuming they are still alive? When the parents are gone, do we move closer to one of our children and if so, which one? This too presents a challenge especially if your children are scattered across the country as ours are.
Once decisions such as these have been made, and the honey-do lists/odd jobs have been taken care of, you are back to square one – what do you do with your time? My life has been spent working, raising a family, studying, writing, and teaching. So, I never really found time to develop a hobby that I could carry into my retirement years to replace the time devoted to my career. Although I must admit, my son teases me: “Dad, remind me not to ask you in my later years what retirement is all about”? According to him, I haven’t retired yet because I have been writing and teaching ever since I finished working, and to him that is not what retired life is all about. So, I guess one could say that my hobbies are writing and teaching and while both of these give me enjoyment (not to mention some added compensation also needed during one’s retirement years), there is one other hobby I recently became involved with.
Eight years into retirement, a couple of health issues (the subject for another article) caused some down-time requiring rehabilitative exercise, and while walking would have sufficed, it got boring. Allow me to digress here a minute. For those of you who have never been in a care-giving situation, one of the things you may or may not know is that care-givers require some down-time too. My wife was my care-giver for a solid year after three operations I underwent within a time span of less than four months, and her down-time, when I was able to be left alone for short periods of time, was spent learning line dancing.
Eventually, in lieu of walking to recuperate from the various surgeries, my wife suggested that I try learning line dancing. Instead of going for walks, she would teach me some of the steps she was learning in her line dance class. Not only was line dancing much more interesting than walking around the house for fifteen minute stretches, but it assisted me considerably in my rehabilitation. And while the rest of the story, as they say, is history, that was not the case here. Line dancing became a hobby for both of us and we use our new-found knowledge to both perform and teach line dancing.
What is line dancing? Many people consider line dancing to be a “western” dance but this is not the case. I say this because depending on where you are in the USA, getting out on the dance floor and “line dancing” to certain songs might just elicit comment from the locals of the area to prove you wrong. I know this from personal experience. Upon returning from the dance floor after line dancing to the music that was being played during a recent visit to an American Legion Hall in Sheridan, Wyoming, I was informed that true “cowboys” do not line dance. I learned later that cowboys do the two-step.
So, back to the question, what is line dancing? I once read that a line dance is a choreographed dance with a repeated sequence of steps in which a group of people dance in one or more lines. I have danced in groups where we had as many as six to eight lines, or even more. The lines of dancers all face the same direction and, although they try to execute the steps the instructor calls out to them in concert, they have no regard for style or self-esteem. This is made easier by the fact that line dancers are not in physical contact with each other. In some of the older types of line dances, however, the dancers face each other (sometime referred to as a “contra”), or the line is a actually a circle (such as “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” although this, too, can be performed as a true line dance), or all dancers in the line follow a leader around the dance floor while holding the hand of the dancers beside them.
Once a person becomes familiar with the various dance steps and the number of beats to the music, line dances can be performed to an assortment of music styles. Songs that come to mind are “The Electric Slide” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” But, line dancing can also be done to songs such as “Neon Moon,” “Waltz across Texas,” “Elvira,” and even the Beach Boys’ hit “Cruisin.” Certain Rock and Roll songs from the 1950 and 1960s also provide good music to line dance to. My wife and I even do a line dance called “Come Dance with Me” to a song made famous back in 1946 by Glenn Miller, called “In the Mood.” New line dances are popping up all over the country as well as abroad every day.
Line dancing provides us with many things vital to a retiree. It is an excellent form of exercise. Thirty minutes to an hour of line dancing five days a week keeps us limber and in fairly good shape. It enables us to have an active social life as one acquires many friends who also enjoy this hobby. With regard to our group, we were fortunate enough to have an instructor who not only taught us line dancing for exercise and fun, but under her tutelage and guidance, formed us into a troupe that performs several times a year at nursing homes, assisted living homes, and VA hospitals. So not only have we embraced line dancing as a hobby, we are using the talent we acquired to share with others who are less fortunate in their retirement years. In addition to line dancing, our troupe also performs various Broadway type skits such as “Big Spender” from Sweet Charity, a song from Cabaret, “When You’re Good to Momma,” from Chicago, and others that bring laughter and joy to the audience. We’ve also performed our line dance routines at the Florida State Fair, Plant City Strawberry Festival, Kathleen Heritage Days, and Cypress Gardens in Winter Park, Florida.
While I can remember wanting to be able to retire early in life, I never really gave any thought to what I wanted to do once I did leave my work for good. We all have those long lists of “honey, do’s and odd jobs” that keep being pushed aside until tomorrow. But how long will they take? How long does it take to fix a creaky floor, tighten up some loose hinges, or paint the shed in the back yard? Six months? Nine months? Eventually they will be done – and that begs the question, what do you do next?
I do not recall exactly how long it took me after I retired to realize that I should have had a plan. It’s amazing. I've spent my life working and teaching and I can remember telling both my co-workers and students: make a plan and work your plan! But, I failed to make a plan myself when it came to my own retirement. Someone once mentioned to me that a person should have three – not one – working hobbies the day they retire. By working hobbies, I mean something that they are passionate about and that will consume their days. Having more than one provides diversity and will help occupy those hours previously spent traveling to and from work.
This was not the case with me. First, my retirement was not planned. It was part of that overall scheme of things called “downsizing.” After twenty-five years with the same employer and aged 55, as much as I wanted to retire, mentally I was not ready. Fortunately, I was able to secure another job. I figured I could work for another five to seven years and then give up work. But that wasn’t in the cards. Nine months later (no, my wife did not have another baby), my new employer also embarked upon a downsizing plan. Anyone out there remember the accounting terms LIFO and FIFO? Well, LIFO applied here. You guessed it, just my luck, “Last In, First Out”! So, what did we do, you ask? We took this second downsizing as a sign. It was our time to retire and we are happy to say we haven’t looked back once, nor regretted our decision to hang it all up in our mid-fifties.
The timing was right as retirement enabled us to downsize ourselves into a smaller home and move to a different locale, closer to my wife’s parents, where we were able to spend some quality time with them before they passed. This brings me to another fact of retirement we rarely give sufficient thought to − or perhaps some of you have. Where does one retire to? Do we move closer to our parents, assuming they are still alive? When the parents are gone, do we move closer to one of our children and if so, which one? This too presents a challenge especially if your children are scattered across the country as ours are.
Once decisions such as these have been made, and the honey-do lists/odd jobs have been taken care of, you are back to square one – what do you do with your time? My life has been spent working, raising a family, studying, writing, and teaching. So, I never really found time to develop a hobby that I could carry into my retirement years to replace the time devoted to my career. Although I must admit, my son teases me: “Dad, remind me not to ask you in my later years what retirement is all about”? According to him, I haven’t retired yet because I have been writing and teaching ever since I finished working, and to him that is not what retired life is all about. So, I guess one could say that my hobbies are writing and teaching and while both of these give me enjoyment (not to mention some added compensation also needed during one’s retirement years), there is one other hobby I recently became involved with.
Eight years into retirement, a couple of health issues (the subject for another article) caused some down-time requiring rehabilitative exercise, and while walking would have sufficed, it got boring. Allow me to digress here a minute. For those of you who have never been in a care-giving situation, one of the things you may or may not know is that care-givers require some down-time too. My wife was my care-giver for a solid year after three operations I underwent within a time span of less than four months, and her down-time, when I was able to be left alone for short periods of time, was spent learning line dancing.
Eventually, in lieu of walking to recuperate from the various surgeries, my wife suggested that I try learning line dancing. Instead of going for walks, she would teach me some of the steps she was learning in her line dance class. Not only was line dancing much more interesting than walking around the house for fifteen minute stretches, but it assisted me considerably in my rehabilitation. And while the rest of the story, as they say, is history, that was not the case here. Line dancing became a hobby for both of us and we use our new-found knowledge to both perform and teach line dancing.
What is line dancing? Many people consider line dancing to be a “western” dance but this is not the case. I say this because depending on where you are in the USA, getting out on the dance floor and “line dancing” to certain songs might just elicit comment from the locals of the area to prove you wrong. I know this from personal experience. Upon returning from the dance floor after line dancing to the music that was being played during a recent visit to an American Legion Hall in Sheridan, Wyoming, I was informed that true “cowboys” do not line dance. I learned later that cowboys do the two-step.
So, back to the question, what is line dancing? I once read that a line dance is a choreographed dance with a repeated sequence of steps in which a group of people dance in one or more lines. I have danced in groups where we had as many as six to eight lines, or even more. The lines of dancers all face the same direction and, although they try to execute the steps the instructor calls out to them in concert, they have no regard for style or self-esteem. This is made easier by the fact that line dancers are not in physical contact with each other. In some of the older types of line dances, however, the dancers face each other (sometime referred to as a “contra”), or the line is a actually a circle (such as “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” although this, too, can be performed as a true line dance), or all dancers in the line follow a leader around the dance floor while holding the hand of the dancers beside them.
Once a person becomes familiar with the various dance steps and the number of beats to the music, line dances can be performed to an assortment of music styles. Songs that come to mind are “The Electric Slide” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” But, line dancing can also be done to songs such as “Neon Moon,” “Waltz across Texas,” “Elvira,” and even the Beach Boys’ hit “Cruisin.” Certain Rock and Roll songs from the 1950 and 1960s also provide good music to line dance to. My wife and I even do a line dance called “Come Dance with Me” to a song made famous back in 1946 by Glenn Miller, called “In the Mood.” New line dances are popping up all over the country as well as abroad every day.
Line dancing provides us with many things vital to a retiree. It is an excellent form of exercise. Thirty minutes to an hour of line dancing five days a week keeps us limber and in fairly good shape. It enables us to have an active social life as one acquires many friends who also enjoy this hobby. With regard to our group, we were fortunate enough to have an instructor who not only taught us line dancing for exercise and fun, but under her tutelage and guidance, formed us into a troupe that performs several times a year at nursing homes, assisted living homes, and VA hospitals. So not only have we embraced line dancing as a hobby, we are using the talent we acquired to share with others who are less fortunate in their retirement years. In addition to line dancing, our troupe also performs various Broadway type skits such as “Big Spender” from Sweet Charity, a song from Cabaret, “When You’re Good to Momma,” from Chicago, and others that bring laughter and joy to the audience. We’ve also performed our line dance routines at the Florida State Fair, Plant City Strawberry Festival, Kathleen Heritage Days, and Cypress Gardens in Winter Park, Florida.
Members of our group are all either retired or semi-retired, our ages ranging from 57 to 79. Note - our instructor herself is 76 years young this year. Not only do we have fun performing for the various audiences, we enjoy meeting and talking to them both before and after the performance (at one such performance we met one of the original Radio City Music Hall’s Rockettes). We like to tell our audiences to watch for someone in the group doing a different step from the others or turning the wrong way; the dancer hasn’t made a mistake – there are no mistakes in line dancing – they are just providing the audience with a professional solo; of course, applause is always appreciated. Finally, all you men out there, take note: line dancing isn’t just for women. There are thirteen members of our group – twelve women and one guy – me!
Now, that’s a subject for another story. But tell me guys, where can you land a gig such as this in retirement? Remember, life is too short not to dance!
Now, that’s a subject for another story. But tell me guys, where can you land a gig such as this in retirement? Remember, life is too short not to dance!
Ruth Tarlo (aged 86, Sydney, Australia): I also attend line dancing once a week. I'm not very good at it. Find it quite strenuous exercise and moderately enjoyable. The group is small and all elderly - like me. The teacher is very nice. I only got there by accident because my keepfit teacher had an accident which has put her out of business for months so I looked for something else on the same day.
Response from Irwin Lengel: Ruth, good for you that you are still of a mind to stay active. That is one of the reasons my wife and I continue to do it. First and foremost is the social friendships we have with the other members of the group. Then there is the satisfaction we get when we perform and see the smiling faces of those we are dancing for. Last but not least, since neither of us are real exercise fanatics, line dancing is great exercise and one we enjoy doing so we are keeping ourselves physically fit.
Hopefully, we can still be dancing at age 86 like you are.
Take care and thanks for your kind comments.
Hopefully, we can still be dancing at age 86 like you are.
Take care and thanks for your kind comments.
Bryan Clark (Alice Springs, Australia): [relating to some of the points made by Irwin] ...The editor I replaced on The Northern Times newspaper relished his retirement; he could watch cricket all day, do an odd job or two that he had neglected for years, etc. He had a nervous breakdown within six months. According to his wife, he could not occupy himself fully as a retiree. Watching cricket on TV and oiling squeaky doors was not enough to occupy him mentally, physically and emotionally...
... Another huge obstacle for some is the loss of status retirement brings. As a rural editor, I remember everyone in town invited me to their parties and social gatherings, the politicians treated me as an extension to their families, everyone and his dog wanted to know me and to be regarded as a personal friend. On retirement, I was dropped like a hot spud! The phone stopped ringing, the invitations ceased overnight, the politicians vanished, etc. That's hard to take. Suddenly, you are nothing! A crushing realisation to accept. I've seen several media-based friends collapse after retirement as they are abandoned by the hordes of parasites that clung to them when they were working in the limelight...
... Personally, it is a dilemma I have never experienced. In retirement, away from the constant pressures of journalism, I have never been more busy in my life; now I have time for indulging to my heart's content in wood carving and other forms of wood craft, metal sculpture, writing books of prose and poetry, sketching, leathercraft, constructing rockeries, photography, exploring wilderness areas, recording oral histories of other's lives ...
To the elderly, I always repeat my favourite maxim: "When you stop learning, you start dying."
I know I won't die until I'm actually dead.
... Another huge obstacle for some is the loss of status retirement brings. As a rural editor, I remember everyone in town invited me to their parties and social gatherings, the politicians treated me as an extension to their families, everyone and his dog wanted to know me and to be regarded as a personal friend. On retirement, I was dropped like a hot spud! The phone stopped ringing, the invitations ceased overnight, the politicians vanished, etc. That's hard to take. Suddenly, you are nothing! A crushing realisation to accept. I've seen several media-based friends collapse after retirement as they are abandoned by the hordes of parasites that clung to them when they were working in the limelight...
... Personally, it is a dilemma I have never experienced. In retirement, away from the constant pressures of journalism, I have never been more busy in my life; now I have time for indulging to my heart's content in wood carving and other forms of wood craft, metal sculpture, writing books of prose and poetry, sketching, leathercraft, constructing rockeries, photography, exploring wilderness areas, recording oral histories of other's lives ...
To the elderly, I always repeat my favourite maxim: "When you stop learning, you start dying."
I know I won't die until I'm actually dead.
Response from Irwin Lengel: I know where you are coming from and thus the reason I tell everyone that may be nearing retirement age (and for my children even sooner) find a hobby - something you are passionate about so that when retirement day comes - while you leave the thing that has put bread and butter on the table for many a years, you still have something to do that will occupy your time and give you are reason for getting up every morning.
I, too thought my work was my world... But line dancing and now writing along with
other adventures my wife and I find ourselves doing are our reasons for
getting up every day. As a matter of fact, lately every day is a new adventure and we are still enjoying life in our 70s probably a lot more than we did while in our 40's and 50's.
Finding that one thing (and not watching the boob tube) that we can become passionate about can make all the difference in a good day or a bad day.
Thanks for sharing.
I, too thought my work was my world... But line dancing and now writing along with
other adventures my wife and I find ourselves doing are our reasons for
getting up every day. As a matter of fact, lately every day is a new adventure and we are still enjoying life in our 70s probably a lot more than we did while in our 40's and 50's.
Finding that one thing (and not watching the boob tube) that we can become passionate about can make all the difference in a good day or a bad day.
Thanks for sharing.
