Round-Heeled Granny
Rod Dreher at The Corner posts about this unbelievable article:
New York Times: Sex and the Single Senior
It's about a 70-year-old woman who has decided that promiscuity is the path to happiness. She is even writing a book about her "adventures." Dreher pretty much said what I think of all this, but I'd like to comment on a couple of things:
Ms. Juska, a retired high school English teacher (round-heeled is an antiquated slang expression for a promiscuous woman), was moved to action after seeing Eric Rohmer's film "Autumn Tale." Its plot involves a woman placing a personal ad in a newspaper on her middle-age friend's behalf.
Okay, so this woman makes a life-altering decision based on...a movie. You've got to be kidding me!
"Before I got home I had written my ad in my head," Ms. Juska said. "But I did think, as if I were teaching a class and would ask my students, `What harm might this decision cause other people?' The only person that would be is my son. So I asked him, and he said: `Go get 'em, Mom. It's your turn.' The night I sent the ad in I felt so great."
My own mother is about the same age as this woman. I couldn't imagine saying to my mother, "Go ahead and sleep around, Mom! Have fun!" This is weird and messed up on so many levels.
"When women in particular hear about what I've done, the question which unbidden comes to them is, `What have I done with my life?' " she continued. "And lots of people at my age don't want to go back and look at it. That's why they're so nuts about their grandchildren. It keeps the focus off them."
So being promiscuous is "doing something with your life?" And maybe people your age are nuts about their grandchildren because they value family. I suppose this woman is too self-absorbed to see that keeping the focus off yourself and putting others first can be a good thing.
I don't know what annoys me more about this article, the woman it's about, or the breezy, look-at-this-plucky-old-lady-rising-above-repression tone. Ugh.
This here old lady is God's gift to male Christians. The mere mental image of her dancing the funky chicken would be enough to make us all go celibate for the next 50 years.