They’re restless, alright, these folks in their Golden Years. They seem to have a maximum attention span of one hour. Then they have to move, to get up and go; where to? Nobody knows. But it’s instinctive, a built-in desire to keep moving.
The afternoon bridge sessions go from 4 pm to 5 pm, one hour. Except on Wednesdays, which is competition day when it lasts for 2 hours. But anyway that consists of a one hour bridge game followed by a one hour post-mortem and blame-game session. Others drift into the library, sit down at a computer and play Patience or Freecell for one hour, sigh deeply and leave.
In the auditorium the concerts and lectures run for one hour, but the Saturday early-bird movie can hit an hour and a half. The restlessness breaks out exactly one hour after the show has started: the wide woman in front of you has had enough. She stands up blocking the screen just as the villain is about to do something with his gun or knife, adjusts herself and her clothes, looks around in the dark as though she can see her friends, sighs, does another adjustment in case there’s still something hanging out and edges her way along the seats. By now the villain has disappeared and you are left looking at a bunch of detectives standing around a pool of blood on the floor.
The afternoon siesta is one hour long and then our energetic Seniors wend their way down to the coffee shop in search of conversation and gossip. A session here lasts about an hour and then they change seats, move to another circle and pick up other tidbits of useless information.
The “One-hour Restless Syndrome” thrives in this atmosphere. Oh, for the days when we were Young and Restless!
