Unlike most of the free world, I am not a huge fan of reality TV. Oh, I’ll confess to daydreaming about baking bread with Paul Hollywood on "British Bake Off," and I watched an entire season of "Amazing Race" once, but other than that I realize that even though it’s human nature to slow down to look at the aftermath of a trainwreck, it’s dangerous to stage a trainwreck just to see what happens.
But I take requests, so when all three of my readers spot something newsworthy and wonder if I’m going to write about it, I take that seriously. I had never seen anything in this franchise before, but "The Golden Bachelor" (ABC, Thursdays, 8 p.m.) appears to be right up Mom, Interrupted’s alley: Hearing aids? Check. Finding love after Medicare kicks in? Check. Bunch of women pitted against each other to gain the affection of a man they just met?
Wait, what?
I understood the basic premise of "The Bachelor/Bachelorette," of course. Bachelor(ette) is presented with a mansion full of people who want them, even though they’ve never met, Bachelor(ette) whittles down the group with the selective awarding of roses, bachelor(ette) spends some time with favored suitors in something called a Fantasy Suite, then lathers, rinses and repeats (all in good clean edited family fun, naturally) until a proposal is made.
The suite thingy has always bewildered me because I’m given to understand that it does not spotlight an activity that actually predicts compatibility, not the way getting lost in Ikea while deciding on a wall unit, finding it in the warehouse and then putting it together without threatening each other with an Allen wrench would.
When you throw people "of a certain age" into this mix, I’m even more confused: I thought that dating post-retirement was centered around who could still drive at night.
But a request is a request, so I hunkered down and watched the first episode. It’s impossible not to be moved by "The Golden Bachelor’s" back story (suddenly widowed from his high school sweetheart six weeks into a long-anticipated retirement), and he seems like a genuinely nice guy who politely did his best not to be too taken aback when one of his suitors pretended to do a strip tease when she met him, or when another presented him with a basket of eggs and informed him that hers were "still fresh," which may or may not have been the cultural high water marks of the hour.
The social media marketing on the show keeps urging me to watch and end my fear of aging. I’ve never been afraid of growing old, but I am afraid that I might get to the point where this looks like a viable option.
Before you start emailing me about how empowering all this is, and how refreshing it is to watch, and what an old fuddy duddy I must be, please know that, while I proudly fly my fuddy freak flag high, I’m not against geriatric dating, especially when everyone’s careful not to break a hip. I know that not everyone has the luxury of having their own "Golden Spouse" rub their feet while heckling the newest reality show from the safety of their own living room.
No, loneliness is a serious concern for everyone, especially for us who are of that "certain age." When I look to steer clear of unwanted solitude, though, I wouldn’t sign up for anything that promises to leave me looking the way I did at the freshman mixer when all my friends got asked to dance and I didn’t. One of the upsides/downsides of getting older is that those wounds are still fresh even after all those years, but we don’t heal as easily now, so maybe we shouldn’t re-inflict them.
Years of high school dances, nightclubs and dating conducted back in "The Flintstones" era showed me after an embarrassing amount of trial and error that competing for a guy was a waste of time; if I expressed interest and he didn’t jump, well, then it was time to move on.
The benefit of getting older is that we have learned from our experience and can avoid the mistakes of our feckless youth because now we are wiser and presumably full of feck. I know that the refreshing part of "The Golden Bachelor" and its inevitable sequel is that we can still do everything we used to, but the refreshing part of getting older is now we’re keenly aware that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.
Elizabeth Evans is a local mother, wife, daughter, sister, former stay-at-home mom, former work-outside-the-home mom, former work-at-home mom and a human resources consultant.
