Don’t Forget Your Dentures

Here's an excerpt from my mom Jan Curran's memoir ACTIVE SENIOR LIVING. It's the list of "house rules" for the dining room at her Active Senior Living facility:

1. No sleeping in the dining room.

2. Please use tissues rather than the cloth napkins for blowing your nose.

3. No baseball caps or other head gear in the dining room.

4. Women should not dine with rollers in their hair.

5. No bare feet.

6. No pajamas, nightgowns or robes in the dining room.

7. No wine service with breakfast.

8. Motorized scooters in designated areas only.

9. Wait staff will not be responsible for partials or dentures left on dining tables.

10. Wait staff will not be responsible for hearing aids left on dining tables.

11. Second helpings on dessert only.

Oddly enough, those are the same rules they have at the CBS commissary.

13 thoughts on “Don’t Forget Your Dentures”

  1. Somehow this really compares to the rules of middle school! Just a few revisions are necessary… substitute retainers for dentures. I-pod ear buds can take the place of hearing aids, Heelys can take the place of motor scooters! =)

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  2. This reminds me a bit of Amos, an Emmy-nominated TV drama starring Kirk Douglas and Elizabeth Montgomery. Amos, dying of cancer and powerless in a sinister old folks home, sacrifices his life to expose the racket going on there, where the home’s managers are collecting social security on old people they bumped off.

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  3. There was a TV pilot a few years back for NBC called Early Bird, based on a nonfiction book by the same name. About a 35-year-old who burned out of his job and went to live down in Century Village in South Florida (giant retirement community, and where my in-laws live, in fact).
    It solved the problem of doing a show with older people which is that, well, they’ve got too many older people. TV wants youth. Young eyeballs = profitable eyeballs. The Golden Girls and even the Diagnosis Murders of the day are gone, which is too bad, ’cause we’ve got some amazingly talented actors in that generation.
    Don’t know what happened to the EARLY BIRD pilot. Lee probably has a handle on it. He usually does.

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  4. There was an NBC (I think) pilot a few years back called EARLY BIRD about a 30-something guy who burns out and moves to Century Village, which is a retirement community in South Florida (where my in-laws live, actually). Don’t know what happened to it — Lee, any thoughts? In general, the problem with doing shows about old folks is they’re populated with, well, old folks, and TV execs (thanks to advertisers) don’t like ’em. Which is too bad, since some of our greatest actors are over the age of 24.

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  5. This reminds me of my mom when she used to visit several dentists in Murfreesboro, TN. She started making rules in our dining room because she says she envies our complete set of healthy teeth. I think it’s just part of aging. Haha.
    I don’t want to wear dentures when I reach her age. That’s why every Saturday, I visit two of my dentists. Murfreesboro (TN)-based clinics provide good dental care in Rutherford County area.

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  6. There is a story of an old woman who left her dentures on the dining table and it stayed there for several months because no one wants to touch it. When she returned she already forgot about the dentures but when she saw them again on the table, she remembered it and where she left them a few months ago. I guess Rule Number 9 explains it, hahaha. Don’t forget your dentures next time.

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