Ordinary Tuesdays #1: The Senior Discount
Ordinary Tuesdays
Observations from everyday life. The small moments, familiar places, chance conversations, and ordinary experiences that quietly reveal something larger.
My grandmother never admitted her age.
Not voluntarily, anyway.
If someone asked how old she was, she would smile and change the subject. If pressed, she’d become suspicious. Age, in her view, was private information. And she guarded it like the identity of Deep Throat, and she was the one holding those missing 18 minutes of Watergate tape!
Then she discovered senior discounts.
Suddenly, age became a valuable asset.
My grandmother could squeeze a nickel so tightly the Queen would fart. A ten percent discount transformed her from a woman who concealed her age into one who announced it proudly at the cash register. And yes, only at the cash register.
This occurred to me recently as I stood at Value Village on a Tuesday morning, waiting for my senior discount. I actually laughed out loud. The lady behind me nodded thoughtfully, probably thinking she’d just witnessed an episode of early-onset dementia.
Turns Out, I Qualify for the Senior Discount
If my teenage self could have seen me, she would have been horrified.
Not because I was shopping at a thrift store.
Because I was standing there quite deliberately to save a few dollars. Well that, and because there are fewer hipsters there on Tuesdays.
The truth is, I wasn’t looking for clothes.
I was hunting for fabric, old jewelry, buttons, and odd little treasures I could take apart and use in my artwork.
I enjoy the hunt.
I enjoy the possibility.
And I enjoy imagining what something might become.
And somewhere between the bins of costume jewelry and the shelves of abandoned craft supplies, I realized something.
This wasn’t the retirement I imagined.
But then again, neither was retirement itself.
Nobody puts “Tuesday morning at Value Village” in retirement brochures.
The brochures show sailboats and sunsets.
Or, worse yet, a day room full of older women doing chair yoga.
What they don’t show are the ordinary days.
The days when you wander through a thrift store looking for inspiration.
The days when you take a class.
Visit a friend’s studio.
Learn something new.
Or follow your curiosity for a few hours.
Retirement isn’t built entirely from big adventures.
Most of it is built on ordinary Tuesdays.
And lately, I’m beginning to think that’s where the good stuff lives.
Cheers,
Cynthia
Read More
- How Do You Build a Meaningful Life After Retirement?
- Before You Retire – The 10 Things No One Tells You to Do
- If I’m Retired Do I Still Need to Make the Bed?
Cynthia Ross Tustin is the founder of I'm Thinking of Retiring, an online publication exploring the psychology, purpose, and everyday realities of life after work. A retired Fire Chief, former ICU and Emergency Room nurse, instructor, and policy writer, she combines lived experience, research, and a lifelong curiosity about human behaviour to write thoughtful essays on retirement, identity, purpose, friendship, and the ordinary moments that quietly reveal something larger. Through her Retirement Field Notes and Ordinary Tuesday series, she encourages readers to approach this next chapter with curiosity rather than certainty.
