The Globe and Mail has a pretty depressing article about the 90210 atmosphere in retirement homes. I can’t wait.

Rather than the dull, anaesthetized places many assume them to be, retirement homes are fraught with the same jealousies and bad behaviour as any close social environment. And cliques abound.

There are geographic and linguistic cliques at the Terraces of Baycrest, an 11-storey retirement home in north Toronto: the Montrealers, the Hungarians, the Romanians.

There are the cliques everyone respects, such as the Holocaust survivors who gather to share stories every Friday night after Shabbat dinner.

And there are the cliques that stir envy, and maybe even resentment. Jean Goldstein, 86, and her husband, Milton, 87, share a lunch table with two other couples. All of them are in relatively good health (the key word being “relatively” – Mr. Goldstein has survived a stroke, heart attack and cancer). The male halves of all three couples can still drive, which is a huge deal. Much like in high school, a driver’s licence is a membership card to the cool kids’ club, conferring freedom at a time when it’s in short supply. And in a world of widows, having a live husband who drives is the equivalent of dating the varsity quarterback with a sweet Mustang.

Wow:

Terraces social worker Heather Lisner-Kerbel remembers an elderly woman who came to her in tears one day.

“She asked, ‘Why won’t people come over to tea? Heather, what’s wrong with me?’”

A down-to-earth woman with curly red hair, Ms. Lisner-Kerbel wasn’t sure how honest she should be – should she tell the woman that people avoided her because she was prone to scary mood swings? The psychiatrist at the Terraces advised her to tread cautiously, as the woman was emotionally fragile and unprepared to hear the harsh truth.

So Ms. Lisner-Kerbel introduced the woman to a single man at the Terraces, also lonely, who happened to have some cognitive impairment. The woman’s temper tantrums rolled off his back, and his memory problems meant he didn’t hold grudges.

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