Book description
Everyone says they would like to retire early, but Rodney Rothman
actually did it -- forty years early. Burnt out, he decides at the age
of twenty-eight to get an early start on his golden years. He travels to
Boca Raton, Florida, where he moves in with an elderly piano teacher at
Century Village, a retirement village that is home to thousands of
senior citizens.
Early Bird is an irreverent, hilarious, and ultimately
warmhearted account of Rodney's journey deep into the heart of
retirement. Rodney struggles for acceptance from the senior citizens
he shares a swimming pool with, and battles with cranky octogenarians
who want him off their turf. The day-to-day dealings begin to wear on
him. Before long he observes, "I don't think Tuesdays with
Morrie would have been quite so uplifting if that guy had to spend
more than one day a week with Morrie."
Rodney throws himself into the spirit of retirement, fashioning a
busy schedule of suntanning, shuffleboard, and gambling cruises. As
the months pass, his neighbors seem to forget that he is fifty years
younger than they are. He finds himself the potential romantic
interest of an aging femme fatale. He joins a senior softball club and
is disturbed to learn that he is the worst player on the team. For
excitement he rides along with a volunteer police officer on his
patrols, hunting for crime. But even the criminals in his community
seem to have retired.
Early Bird is a funny, insightful, and moving look at what
happens to us when we retire, viewed from a remarkably premature
perspective. Any reader who plans on becoming an old person will enjoy
joining Rodney on his strange journey, as he reconsiders his notions
of romance, family, friendship, and ultimately, whether he's ever
going back to work.
"If you're tired of working but think retirement
is only for the injured, the incontinent, or the rapper Jay-Z,
Early Bird will be music to your lazy ears.... As he invades
a Boca Raton retirement community and battles for acceptance, Rodney
has to fend off grumpy old men, cliquey old women, and a gimpy
shuffleboard stroke. The encounters result in rapid-fire laughs as he
eventually weasels his way into the pool gossip gang and even finds
himself fending off aggressive advances by a sixty-something femme
fatale. The new friendships result in a host of poignant moments....
In the end, it turns out life with the black-socks-and-shorts crowd
can be just as taxing as life in the fast lane--except for nap time,
of course."
-- Paul Ulane, Maxim
Rodney Rothman is now living in Los Angeles. He is
a former head writer for the Late Show with David Letterman,
and was a writer and supervising producer for the television show
Undeclared. His writing has appeared in the The New York
Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Best American
Nonrequired Reading, The New Yorker, McSweeney's Quarterly, and
Men's Journal.
