What do people like to do when they get old?

For those of you who thought that the elderly like to go down to the church hall to play bingo, or ride around on those giant tricyles, complete with flags and little horns that say "aaa-OOOO-gah!" or watch The Price is Right and order senseless, random objects from the Harriet Carter catalog, I have some news for you.

Yesterday evening, the girls and I drove over to my hometown to celebrate my grandpa's 87th birthday with all the rest of my family. We were going to sing the birthday song and have cake and ice cream and sit around and talk for a while, letting my grandpa bask in the gathering of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, assembled there at the assisted living center to honor him.

My grandpa and step-gran, they are so cute. Grandad was wearing a yellow golf shirt and a yellow cardigan sweater, his white cotton candy hair fluffed up for the occasion. My step-gran, Catherine, was dressed rather formally for the occasion in stockings and heels and a powder blue suit with pearls and a little diamond circle brooch. Her white hair was coiffed into a formidable helmet and she was wearing pink lipstick.

There were about five little tables in the hospitality room where we were gathered and I sat down with the girls at a table by a tall book case stuffed with paperback books. Evidently, this room holds all the overflow from the center's library, because there was a matching book case, equally crammed, next to the little table where my brother and sister-in-law were sitting.

I'd come into the room in the middle of a conversation that was being lobbed back and forth across the tables, so I said hello and then sat quietly as everyone was bla-bla-blahing around me. Out of idle curiosity, I glanced at the titles of the paperback books close to me, and immediately dived into my purse for a piece of paper and a pen.

This is a small -- v-e-r-y small -- sample of the books available in that little room, which my entire family immediately dubbed The Porno Room after reading my list.

1. Apache Caress -- This book came complete with a cover depicting a woman in the throes of passion, scantily clad, sitting astride a young Indian warrior with feathers in his hair, similarly smitten. The title alone brought a blush to my modest cheeks, but when I pulled it off the shelf and saw that cover picture, I thought I was going to need smelling salts. So I immediately passed it around to the whole family so that they could see it too.

2. Wild Enough for Willa -- Something tells me that this particular Willa isn't wild about new knitting patterns. I didn't look at the cover of this one because "Willa" sounds like a name that belongs to someone in the 70+ demographic and I didn't want to see something like the picture on the front of Apache Caress, only with, well....you know. There are some things you just don't need to see. Ever.

3. Passport to Passion -- Evidently, you don't need a passport. You can find plenty of passion right. There. At. The. Old folks' home.

4. Fire at Midnight -- I could be wrong, but I don't think this book is about the third watch down at Station #12

5. Sweet Summer Heat -- On the golf course? The tea room? Or maybe the custodian's closet?

6. Sweet Savage Surrender -- Oh-kay. Ew.

7. Wild Sweet Ecstasy -- Again, ew.


Who writes these things?

All of a sudden, I understand why the advent of Viagra was hailed as a miracle in the geriatric world. Sweet mother of pearl....