Three personality types at the Senior Center

For more than ten years I volunteered at our local museum almost every day.  Volunteers came and went.  Everybody got along with everybody else, it seemed to me, and it never occurred to me to sort people by personalities.  Why would anybody do such a thing?

Six months ago, I retired from the museum at the age of eighty.  I took a month off before I finally decided to get involved in the Senior Center.  It happens to be across the street from the museum and I’d been there to many events and programs through the years.  So I signed up for the crochet group, the lunch gang, the monthly trivia contests, and several day trips on the center’s bus.  Spent lots of days working jigsaw puzzles in a room set aside just for that purpose. 

It was great.  I met new people and laughed my way through learning to crochet for the first time.  I had lots of sewing and quilting experience but wanted to try something new.  Left-handers are always good sports about their ‘hand-icap’, right?  I went to a few exercise classes and promptly dropped out.  Maybe I’ll write a post about that someday.  Or not.

The trivia games were fun.  Four people to a team and four sets of questions.  Winners got a $10 gift card from Walmart.  Lots of laughing at silly answers and groaning when we finally heard the right answers.  The bus trips always included a great lunch in a nearby small town.  Adventure!  Live entertainment!  Excitement!  Once in a while we even went to the Big H - HOUSTON.  Not my thing, but everybody said a good time was had by all.

In the puzzle room there were fond memories for most of us, serious discussions about the merits of the 500-piece box versus the 1,000-piece box, and whether it was cheating if you looked at the picture on the box or stored it away out of sight.  Yes, indeed, these are important topics and issues for all us boomers.

After a few months of all this activity, it struck me one day how certain sub-groups had formed within the larger group.  That caused me to start paying attention.  It seemed to me, for example, that the puzzle-workers shunned the exercise rooms and vice-versa.  That the trivia players liked the bingo games.  That the bus riders and karaoke folks were more likely to get all dressed up in holiday or special event garb than the dominoes and card players.  And so on and so forth.

I finally sorted everybody into three neat categories.  Just for my own reference and edification, don’t ya know.  I think of them the Visible Ones, the Lonely Ones, and the Thinking Ones. 

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.  Do you ever sort large groups of people into categories?