I Hope I Die Before I Have to Live with Old People

I've spent the past 10 years preparing to be an intolerable old person. I've been learning about wine, classical music and Samuel Johnson. I plan to one day drop this knowledge on an over-55 community in Palm Springs, Calif., where I can drive drunk on my golf cart with my like-aged friends, re-creating my college life. Only this time I'll have physiology for an excuse as to why I'm not having sex.

Then I learned, to my surprise, that not all old people get along. I'd foolishly assumed old people were all the same: kind of cranky, a little confused, not...