RAPping at the Senior Center

Monday, December 04 2006, 07:53 AM EST

Contributed by: Mel Fabrikant

Senior Center
You know what happens when you get a dozen women together around a table! Maybe I was lucky, only seven showed up. I say lucky because this fun group parried with me from all angles; twitted me back as I joked with them. All in all, we had a lot of fun. Of course the most popular word from the seniors there was “EH?”. 

When I asked why there were no men members, a salvo of responses were fired at me.

“Most of us don’t have husbands anymore, they are downstairs here at the center, my husband would rather not attend, who wants to listen to a bunch of women gabbing?”! I guess that like me, they are shy and demure. (great big grin).

We started off by taking a group picture and putting names to the faces. First we had Alfrieda Meachum. Now how would one pronounce Alfrieda? I mean . most common is Alfreda, not Alfrieda. Does one accent the ‘i’ in Alfrieda giving it prominence or maybe the ‘eda’? That wasn’t so bad until we got to Nanette ‘Nan’ Emr. Alright .. try rolling that around your tongue articulating the 3 letters .. no not the palindromic one .. and then letting the correct pronunciation roll out. Nan wouldn’t let me; she told me right away! Effen you want to know, then you’ll have to attend the RAP Group on Fridays at noon. (and they will allow men to attend).

Some of the others were kinda easy like Irene. I say kinda because there were two Irenes. Brave, but stupid me said .. okay .. we have Irene number one and we have Irene number two. NO! That didn’t fly! Instead we had Little Irene and Big Irene. Now, gentle reader see if you can figure out why. Without taxing the imagination, Little Irene was shorter than Big Irene. That makes sense, I guess. Gotta give these women credit.

After partaking of some of the snacks .. the artery clogging types .. along with some coffee or tea (no me offered) we got down to business. If you call trying to make some sense of your questions and answers while three or four different conversations are going on, well then .. yes . we got down to business.

Trying to ascertain the beginnings of the RAP Group, we figured out that it was before their time, that it had been going on for a good many years. Their reasons for attending also followed a pattern: “I wanted to do something, get away from the house, get away from the kids, didn’t want to stay home, husband passed away, my friend brought me here, my daughter suggested that I attend, Pearl brought me.”.

Well . what do you gals do during your RAP sessions was the next question. The answers were just as equivocal as to the last questions. We talk politics, tell jokes . gee … you know sometimes it is better that we don’t have any men around, we sing and in general just have fun. We enjoy each other’s company.

Among the fun loving members are: Alfrieda Meachum, Irene (Big) Steinberg, Irene (Little) Alterman, Evelyn Jenkins, Nan Emr, Jenny Sethi, Amy Stross, Joan Carpenter, Pearl Giimulle, Doris Hopkins, Rose Herman and Betty Mascrangello.

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