I'm a little older than some of you (61) and I've been telling people for years that I'm a retired nurse. No one has ever questioned me about it, and when they want to know what kind of career I had, I jump right in and tell them all the things I got to do as an RN. There's plenty to discuss along those lines, and it gets me past the awkward-silence phase when the next question is "How were you able to retire so young (at 55)?"