The New Generation Gap : Today’s Elderly Got New Deal Jobs, G.I. Bill Degrees, Subsidized Mortgages and Social Security. Their Children Got the Bill.

THE TOWERING BILLBOARDS ON INTERSTATE 95 ON THE South Florida coast sell a particular kind of dream to a particular kind of buyer. The dream comes true on lush golf courses and in sun-drenched villas. And the buyers, whose permanently smiling faces beam down from these signs, are old, but happy. The hair may be white, but the skin is tanned and smooth. The eyes sparkle with contentment. “Welcome to the club,” says the larger-than-life couple on the sign advertising one retirement community.

It is a big club, and a happy one. Millions of senior citizens have settled in Florida and across the Sunbelt into a lifestyle they could not have imagined when they were young. “I couldn’t complain about my life one bit,” Martin L. Gotwalt says as he sits under an awning at the Palm Beach Lakes Golf Club and sips a cold drink. Gotwalt, dressed in shorts and a sport shirt, is a sturdy 75. His legs are muscled and his skin is a warm bronze. He has just finished a round of golf with his best friend, 75-year-old Jim Sheely. Childhood chums from York, Pa., they have been friends for seven decades, and recently retired to neighboring homes on nearby Singer Island, a manicured retirement enclave.

They know that they have lived through a golden era of American prosperity. Sheely owned a small moving company, which he sold to fund his retirement. Gotwalt is a retired executive with a very good pension. In addition, each collects about $15,000 a year from Social Security. “We worked like hell in our day,” says Gotwalt, “but it did turn out pretty well.”

“I can’t say I expected to retire like this,” says Sheely. “When we were young, most people didn’t live this long.” Sheely, who is fighting an ongoing battle with cancer, owes his physical health to modern medicine and his fiscal health to Medicare. And while he’s not as robust as his friend, he seems to savor life just a bit more. “Years ago, people our age didn’t go out and play golf all the time. I have to say, it is wonderful.”

Behind him, on an emerald putting green, another elderly man lines up his shot. As he swings, the club looks like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. The motion is smooth, relaxed, timeless. When the ball rolls in, a small cheer goes up from the other golfers.

It is a perfect Florida afternoon--70 degrees and sunny. There isn’t enough breeze to rustle the palm trees. The only sounds are those of the happy voices of other senior golfers and the click of a sprinkler in the distance. There is nothing in this picture of retirement ease to suggest that this will likely be the only American generation to have it so good in the final season of life.

FOR MANY SENIOR CITIZENS, IT TRULY IS A WONDERFUL LIFE, ESPECIALLY since someone else is paying much of the bill. Today’s elderly, who make up about 12.5% of the population, receive 60% of federal social spending. This is four times as much as is spent on American children. Despite the widely held notion that America neglects the old, the country actually exceeds all of Western Europe and Japan in per capita spending for those over 65. The total, for Social Security, health care and some lesser benefits, is more than $500 billion a year.

All this spending has created a special class of citizens. The elderly are the only age group with universal government health insurance (Medicare) and the only one that receives income assistance--up to $24,500 a year for couples--whether they need it or not. (One million households with $100,000 incomes receive monthly Social Security checks.) Depending on the state they live in, they may also be eligible for age-based tax breaks on property, income and capital gains.

As President Clinton has noted in recent speeches, the old have bequeathed to the young some daunting economic challenges. The children and grandchildren of today’s senior citizens will have to repay the $4.4-trillion national debt, rescue Social Security from potential insolvency and revive an investment-starved economy. Clinton has proposed a combination of new investment and new taxes to start this job, but completing it will be especially difficult because young workers, including college graduates, are making less money. Today’s 30-year-old high school graduate earns $3,500 less per year than he would have in 1979. He is also less likely to have health insurance or a pension plan. No wonder that record numbers of young adults remain in their parents’ homes: They can’t afford to move out.

This growing economic gap between the generations has set the stage for a painful political conflict. The young may rightfully resent the burden placed on them by senior citizens who enjoyed the best years of American opportunity and then left them with the world’s most-indebted nation, its infrastructures crumbling and social programs teetering on the brink of collapse. Frightened baby boomers--those in their 30s and 40s--have already begun to organize to oppose the powerful senior citizen lobby in Washington. And they have become more vocal in their attacks on a system they say unfairly favors the old. They argue that a country with 20% of its children living in poverty cannot afford to subsidize anyone’s country club retirement.

“Today’s elderly, the New Deal generation, have been terrific to themselves,” says 40-year-old Paul Hewitt of the National Taxpayers Union, a conservative Washington lobby group. Indeed, if one looks at history through Hewitt’s eyes, that group has occupied the most prosperous era in history and has been favored by government initiatives at every step in life. When they needed work, the New Deal gave them work. When they came back from the war, Marty Gotwalt and his comrades in arms were able to go to college under the GI Bill. Like many, Gotwalt then bought his first home with a subsidized government mortgage. And they sent their children to college with the help of generous loan and subsidy programs that have since dried up.

As today’s retirees began to see the end of their working life, Social Security and Medicare were steadily improved. With the help of large increases in programs for the old, the poverty rate in Senior America has dropped from about 35% in 1960 to 12% today. (In contrast, the percentage of children living in poverty rose from about 14% in 1967 to 20% in 1991.)

The comfortable retirement of today’s elderly has been funded by steadily escalating Social Security taxes. Not coincidentally, Hewitt says, as those taxes have gone up, private savings, which could provide private retirement and investment funds for today’s workers, have declined.

The National Taxpayers Union argues that special tax breaks and generous federal programs have evolved from modest supports into a welfare system that shifts enormous amounts of money from the young to the old, many of whom are already rich. One result is that wealth has become more concentrated in the hands of the elderly than at any time in the last two centuries. In fact, New York University economist Edward Wolff estimates that the average household headed by someone 65 or older has a net worth of $258,000. “It’s like this one generation won the lottery,” says Hewitt. “Naturally, there is a growing sense of resentment” among the younger taxpayers who have to pay out the prizes.

The generations are not yet at war, but the anger bubbles beneath the surface. Privately, some critics of the senior citizens’ lobby use terms like “greedy geezers” to describe an elderly population that is wealthier than any other group, but that still resists efforts to limit its government benefits.

Advocates for the elderly say baby boomers don’t understand the insecurities of old age. They insist that while Senior America can be described with almost cartoon-like irony, a closer examination yields a much different picture. After all, half of all single women over 65 live on less than $12,000 a year. They don’t own golf carts or take Caribbean cruises. And they are terrified of losing the government support--Social Security, housing, medical care--that literally keeps them alive.

Beneath the anger, both sides regard the future with a measure of fear rooted in a 20th Century paradox: Science has greatly extended our lives, but we don’t know how to pay for these extra years. Billions of dollars are spent each year to gain a few last days of life for elderly Americans. Past generations didn’t have to worry about financing this kind of care, or paying for 20 or 30 years of retirement. Today, great numbers of people can expect to spend more time out of the work force--in childhood and old age--than in it. Now, ironically, in addition to fearing death, we all must worry about the cost of living too long.

AS MARTY GOTWALT AND JIM SHEELY drive home from the golf course, a small group gathers nearby for drinks and free fried catfish at the Blackwater Bar and Grill, an ‘80s-style blond-wood fern bar where patrons are greeted by a wooden Indian and a buffet. The core of the local chapter of the American Association of Boomers, they are all in their 30s and 40s, and they are worried. A list of their concerns sounds like Clinton’s agenda--health care, the federal debt, Social Security.

The issues may be national in scope, but the anxiety is deeply personal. Thirty-eight-year-old Elaine Davidson wonders when she’ll have the money to leave her parents’ home. Rick Fanelli, a 41-year-old financial consultant, frets about his personal finances. Hard-pressed to save for retirement and convinced that Social Security will abandon him, Fanelli is counting on an inheritance from his parents to secure his old age. Kathleen Shabotynskyj, 37, chuckles about the slim chance that any of them will ever enjoy the kind of retirement pictured on the billboards out on I-95. Her own parents, Ann and Jerry Irving, lead this kind of life in a South Florida development called Martin Downs, their days revolving around the local country club. While Shabotynskyj doesn’t begrudge her parents’ pleasures, she believes their lifestyle is a fading dream. “I’m never going to be able to retire like my parents,” she says, “unless I move to the Bahamas.”

Not one of the boomers gathered around the table is counting on collecting anything from Social Security. In a 1991 poll, 90% of Americans ages 30 to 39 said they did not expect to get back what they are paying into the system. It is impossible to say whether this fear is justified, but it is likely that Social Security benefits will be scaled back. And today’s young aren’t likely to get the kind of generous pensions that their parents’ generation received, either. In fact, so many companies have failed to adequately fund pension programs that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which ensures that retirees will be paid, is expected to run deficits well into the next century. Among the companies with underfunded pension plans are giants such as Chrysler, General Motors and Bethlehem Steel. If just one goes out of business, the taxpayers could be stuck with the bill for billions in pension obligations.

Because the Social Security and pension systems both face problems, the boomers are under pressure to provide for their own old age. But though they know they should be putting their own money away for the future, many are hard-pressed by the high cost of housing and health care. Since the ‘70s, many employers have cut back on health insurance, while the cost of health care has exploded. Those in today’s work force must labor harder and longer than their parents to achieve the same standard of living.

This predicament is more prevalent among those born after 1955. Many of their older brothers and sisters were able to buy homes in the late 1970s, and they benefited from the real estate inflation of the 1980s. But those who entered the job market in the recession-prone ‘70s did not get rich in real estate. Instead, they watched interest rates soar and the price of even a starter home float beyond their grasp. The traditional cornerstone of middle-class security was eluding them. Slowly, they began to realize that they would be the first young Americans who might not do better in life than their parents, a theme Clinton played to during the campaign.

“By the time they were my age, my parents had a custom-built, four-bedroom house and seven kids,” notes Shabotynskyj, who is an office worker. Today she and her husband, who works in the computer field, occupy a tiny two-bedroom home with their 4-year-old son. With a full-time job and no maternity benefits, Shabotynskyj is not sure whether she’ll have more children. She expects to work until she’s at least 67, and even then she fears that retirement will be a struggle. Things will be even worse, she fears, if the American economy continues to lose high-paying manufacturing jobs and fails to educate the young so they can be productive adults.

In Florida and elsewhere, the cost of Medicare and the senior-citizen vote are often blamed for limiting school spending and helping to speed the collapse of urban school districts. Across the nation, districts are cutting teachers’ salaries and increasing class sizes. Meanwhile, funding for day care centers remains inadequate. At the Bright Beginnings Day Care Center in West Palm Beach, for example, there are about 50 names on the waiting list for 32 subsidized slots. Countywide, more than 1,000 eligible low-income children are on waiting lists.

Young parents see underfunded, overcrowded schools and inadequate day care as evidence of generational inequity and another warning sign. Looking ahead to the next century, it is hard to imagine how an undereducated, under-parented nation of fast-food workers will generate the kind of growth and tax revenues needed to deal with the national debt and expanding social needs. “That’s why our age group has to begin to put pressure on the politicians now,” says Shabotynskyj. “We can’t stay out of politics anymore.”

That sentiment led Dallas-area accountant Karen Meredith to form the American Association of Boomers. The 4-year-old group already has about 26,000 members in chapters scattered nationwide, and Social Security is at the top of their agenda. Government officials raised taxes for the program over the past decade to build a trust fund surplus to cover the 77 million baby boomers when they retire in the next century. But according to Meredith, the surplus is a mirage.

“First of all, there really is no ‘trust fund’ for Social Security,” says Meredith. In fact, Social Security has always depended on current taxes paid by younger workers to finance retirement benefits. The average worker retiring today gets back all he or she contributed in less than six years, and may go on collecting benefits indefinitely. “The second problem is there really is no cash surplus being built up,” she adds. Indeed, the government has been borrowing from the surplus to reduce the size of the annual budget deficit, giving the Social Security system special non-negotiable bonds that the Treasury promises to repay, by passing the debt on to taxpayers. But even if the payments are made, Social Security officials admit that without major reforms, the system will run out of money just as the last of the boomers retire.

When Social Security was created in 1935, relatively few people could expect to live long enough to collect. And in the beginning, there were 55 workers to support each retiree, so taxes for the old-age program could be kept low. Today, the average American will live to be at least 75, and the ratio of workers to retirees is about 3 to 1. It is as if a group of grandchildren agreed to support an aging grandmother who then proceeded to outlive them. As the years go by, there are fewer grandchildren shouldering the burden, and granny’s expenses, especially health care, continue to rise. At least a third of all taxpayers pay more into the Social Security and Medicare than they pay in federal income tax.

“We just can’t go on like this indefinitely,” Meredith argues. “There have to be some changes made, soon.” Old-age benefits will have to be reduced, she says, and the elderly will likely have to pay for more of their own medical care. “This is something a lot of people don’t want to hear,” she says. “But at some point, fairness has to be considered.”

MIRIAM SPIELMAN HASN’T GIVEN much thought to whether the government benefits she receives are fair to the younger generation. Seventy-seven years old, she lives with her husband, Ben, 87, in one of the largest senior communities in the county--Century Village of West Palm Beach. Protected by fences and guarded entrances, Century Village is a sprawling development of sun-washed stucco buildings laid out in neat little rows. The guards, the fences and the cinder-block architecture make the place feel like a military base. Only invited guests may enter.

Because it was one of the area’s first big senior citizen complexes, many of Century Village’s residents are quite old. The golf course here is not crowded, and many of the residents, including Miriam Spielman, spend most of their time indoors, avoiding the sun. “What they don’t tell you,” she says with a wry smile, “is that nine months of the year here, you sweat.”

On a warm South Florida morning, Miriam is upset about Ben’s teeth. The day before, he had taken them out and forgotten where he put them. As she thought about the expense of replacing the dentures, Miriam lost her temper. She shook her husband, who has Alzheimer’s disease, and demanded that he tell her where he put them. Ben, who has trouble telling the difference between the bathroom and the bedroom, couldn’t help her. Eventually a frantic search of the neat, four-room apartment turned up the teeth. The crisis had passed. But the shame of her anger is still fresh in Miriam’s heart.

“It’s like living with a 2-year-old,” she says, exhaling a sigh. Behind her, Ben sits quietly on a chair. His big glasses and prominent nose make him look like a friendly owl. “I know you!” he says, pointing a finger at the strangers who have come to call. But of course, he doesn’t know his visitors. Ben doesn’t even know his wife. Miriam, whose life is now dedicated to Ben’s care, doesn’t get the reward of knowing she is appreciated. “It just frightened me to think I would have to replace those teeth,” she frets.

As Miriam talks, Ben gets up and starts to walk away. “Sit down, darling,” she calls--”he doesn’t even know who I am” she says under her breath. “C’mon, sweetheart,” she repeats, “sit down.” Ben returns to his chair and again sits silently. Miriam is preoccupied with trying to keep him out of a nursing home. She has lost 60 pounds in the past year. Her one respite is a weekly group meeting for relatives of Alzheimer’s patients, which, she says, is a lifesaver.

Miriam Spielman’s life has little to do with the country club existence enjoyed by Kathleen Shabotynskyj’s parents in Martin Downs, or the golfers at Palm Beach Lakes Golf Club. Together, she and Ben receive $1,275 a month from Social Security. A house that was sold long ago has left them with some modest investments. But with interest rates so low, the money does not generate much income. Medicare takes care of most of Ben’s health needs. But government programs are not providing the Spielmans with a golden old age. Instead, they are the difference between dignity and disaster.

The thought of losing any part of this support is terrifying. “What if Ben needs a nursing home? That’s $3,400 a month. How much of what we have now will be taken away by that? And then, how am I supposed to live after that?” A strong woman who until recently still worked part-time, Spielman is in nearly perfect health and is likely to live for many more years.

Such longevity frightens the young, who imagine being forced to pay indefinitely for retirement benefits and expensive health care. It frightens the old, who worry that, eventually, they will overstay their welcome. This is why many senior citizens resist calls for Social Security and Medicare reform. If medical care is to be rationed, for example, many could lose access to expensive, life-enhancing treatments. Eighty-year-olds might be denied knee replacement operations, for example, on the grounds that they could soon die. Likewise, if Social Security benefits are cut, some will lose their membership in the club advertised on the Florida billboards. Others, like Spielman, could find themselves unable to maintain a household.

Spielman’s life has made her fatalistic about the future. She recognizes the nation’s economic problems, and even sympathizes with the complaints of the younger generation. “I feel sorry for today’s children, especially, because they have a big nut to crack,” she says. But she rejects any solution that would limit her benefits. She isn’t greedy. She is afraid. “I can’t tell you what the answers are,” she confesses. She looks around the small apartment that has become her world, and then she looks at Ben, a husband who has become her burden of love. “I can’t answer,” she repeats, “and frankly, I can’t care.”

SENIOR CITIZENS WHO fear the future, and those wealthy ones who do not, share a mighty defender. Through the 1980s, as the federal deficit soared and politicians searched for ways to contain spending, the American Association of Retired Persons resolutely protected Social Security. Led by AARP, the elderly--who vote in greater numbers than any age group--have been able to make the program virtually untouchable. Their power is on display every four years as presidential candidates routinely visit senior citizens centers in South Florida and promise that they won’t touch Social Security.

One gets a hint of AARP’s size by looking at the cars in any parking lot in South Florida. It seems that half the vehicles sport little blue-and-silver AARP membership stickers on their windows. Throughout Senior America, AARP dominates the landscape. More than half of the over-50 population--33 million people--are dues-paying members. Bigger than the Republican and Democratic parties, AARP has almost $300 million in annual revenues.

As a lobbying group with a mailing list of more than 30 million voters, AARP may be in a political league all its own. Its major concerns include health care, housing and age discrimination. But Social Security is at the top of AARP’s agenda, and it is the one issue on which the organization is least flexible. President Clinton learned just how tough the senior lobby can be when his aides recently floated the notion of a one-year freeze on the annual cost-of-living increase in Social Security. Within a day, the Administration was hit with a barrage of political attacks and thousands of telegrams from irate senior citizens. Instead, he proposed that senior citizens earning more than $35,000 would pay income taxes on 85% of their Social Security benefits, up from the current 50%. While that is a smaller sacrifice than he originally envisioned, the AARP continues to oppose any increase in taxes on benefits.

The group insists that the national debt be blamed on health-care inflation and Reaganomics, which held that the government could cut taxes, inflate defense spending and still balance the budget. According to AARP, Social Security is on sound financial footing because the IOUs it holds are backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government. No matter what, those notes will be paid, with interest, and the system will be solvent at least until the year 2030, when the last of the boomers retire.

Despite the long-term problems, AARP resists efforts to limit payouts, even for those wealthy senior citizens who wouldn’t miss their Social Security checks if they were cut off tomorrow. Every American worker who contributes trusts that he or she may eventually draw benefits. Take away this universal reward and public support for Social Security will crumble, AARP officials argue.

Unlike welfare, programs for senior citizens are viewed as earned benefits. And they have been very effective in preserving the health and well-being of the old. “Before Social Security, many of the elderly were extremely poor,” notes Evelyn Morton, the chief Social Security expert at AARP. “Their families couldn’t provide for their support, and many actually lived in poorhouses. It was decided that government should help take care of people at this stage in life.” AARP has commissioned polls that show continued solid support for Social Security. But Morton believes that this support is contingent on the assumption that, eventually, everyone crosses the line from taxpayer to recipient.

Because the system is promoted as a pension trust fund, not an anti-poverty program, the government has allowed it to benefit the wealthy more than the poor. Income over about $57,600 is not taxed for Social Security, so poorer workers pay a higher percentage of their salaries into the fund than do the rich. And wealthy recipients often get higher monthly payments because allotments are based on a worker’s last few years of earnings. Yet Morton argues that it would be impossible to maintain public support for the program if it were converted to a need-based, welfare-style system that helped only the poor, rather than one that benefits every economic class. Welfare, after all, is perhaps the least popular government program of all.

In Morton’s view, senior citizens “don’t want to cheat their children and grandchildren,” but they have come to expect a lot, from the government. Even the millionaires among them, she says, believe that they deserve the benefits they receive. In a subtle shift, the AARP has begun to advocate health-care reforms and spending policies to benefit every generation. The association has, in recent years, begun alliances with children’s advocates in an attempt to plan “intergenerational” solutions to problems--in some areas, for example, senior volunteers are working with latchkey kids.

These kinds of mutually supportive programs are promoted enthusiastically by AARP president Lovola Burgess. She suggests that the future holds a more modest lifestyle for the elderly, and more active contact between senior citizens and the rest of society.

Burgess has spent the past year traveling the country, talking with senior citizens, and she believes she sees a trend developing. “I don’t think the country-club retirement lifestyle will continue,” says Burgess, a 76-year-old retired high school principal from Albuquerque. “The country and the economy are different now. Our children and grandchildren face great difficulties. Work, home ownership, raising a family are all harder than they used to be. Older people, especially those who went through the Depression, will have to help out, show what we learned from that experience. These problems are difficult, but they can be solved.”

IF THE PROBLEMS FEARED by those on both sides of the generation gap are to be addressed, neither will be entirely happy with the solutions. Somehow, the Spielmans will have to be protected without boomers like Kathleen Shabotynskyj being taxed unfairly. At the same time, the golfers at the Palm Beach Lakes club cannot be asked to give up so much that they use their votes, and their wealth, to block any changes.

The hazy outline of a compromise between the generations is visible. Congress has already decreed that by the time the boomers retire, the qualifying age for Social Security will be pushed from 65 to 67. Despite the AARP’s power, it is also possible that Social Security benefits will be taxed more broadly. Some retirement experts suggest that the United States should adopt a two-tiered system, with a single lower base payment for all and supplements going to those in need. Cuts in veterans’ and civil-service pensions were suggested at Clinton’s economic summit last December. And efforts to contain federal health-care costs may limit access to expensive treatments and require that retirees pay more for what they get. All of these reforms will be considered in coming years.

No matter what reforms take hold, one thing is clear: The era of country-club retirement is an aberration. Before 1960, the notion of segregated, leisure living for the old would have been considered a futuristic fantasy. In the next century, this lifestyle almost certainly will be regarded as an anachronistic waste of money and a less-than-human separation of the generations.

For future retirees, daily rounds of golf and special activities will likely be reserved for the wealthy few. Instead, more senior citizens will probably remain in their hometowns and neighborhoods rather than migrating to sprawling Sunbelt senior villages. Healthy and strong, they will work well into their 70s.

Boomers who feel financial pressure today should expect more stress in the future, warns Hewitt of the National Taxpayers Union. Huge federal deficits will require several rounds of federal tax increases. At the same time, some analysts are expecting a further, steep decline in housing prices after large numbers of older citizens begin putting their homes on the market in the mid-’90s. These sellers, who will need cash for retirement, are likely to create an oversupply that may drive prices further down. “We’re in an interregnum right now, before an incredible fall,” says Hewitt. “It could also have a serious effect on the financial sector, because it is so tied up in real estate.”

In this harsh new world, boomers and their elders may find comfort in coming together. They could re-create some of the traditional relationships that have seemed to disappear in modern times.

David Demko, a gerontologist and author of a syndicated advice column for senior citizens, predicts that small group homes for senior citizens, which are already sprouting in some places, will become common by the year 2000. Extended families may also come back into vogue during the decades ahead. In these intergenerational households, senior citizens who are welcomed into their children’s homes will be relied on to care for grandchildren. Middle-aged boomers will in turn provide more support for their mothers and fathers even as they struggle to save for their own uncertain old age.

This new, old-fashioned lifestyle will reduce the isolation of the old and the young, an isolation so real in South Florida that senior citizens often ask new mothers not to take their crying babies out of restaurants because they enjoy hearing the sound.

“Independence is wonderful, but it can be taken to the extreme, which is isolation,” says Demko. Indeed, since the 1960s and the development of retirement communities, old and young have been leading ever more separate lives. Along the way, young people have been denied everyday contact with the realities of aging and the old have lost touch with the young.

But even Demko, who advocates this way of life, has no illusions. “Families like the TV Waltons, where everyone lived together, didn’t all love it. But people had to come together, out of necessity, and they made it work.”

On the coast of Florida, it’s not clear whether the generations are ready for these kinds of solutions. At the Blackwater Bar and Grill, Elaine Davidson only wants to move out of her parents’ home, not continue to accept the Waltons’ lifestyle. Her social life is hard enough as it is.

Senior citizens don’t seem any more interested in giving up their independence. For some, flinty self-sufficiency is practically a religious imperative. Others know that dark days may lie ahead--but that their time for worry is over.

“The national debt is for people in the future. They have to prepare themselves,” says Marty Gotwalt at the Palm Beach Lakes Golf Club.

His lifelong friend, Jim Sheely, agrees, but he’s not entirely at peace with the legacy that will be left to his grandchildren. “I’d be very apprehensive for a child coming into the world right now,” Sheely says as he rises to leave the little clubhouse. “Things can’t get any worse than this.’ ”