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It’s a snazzy retirement party that a very good friend is tossing for herself. She has ordered grape leaves, hummus and lots of very good French wine.

She deserves all of it.

She has been dragging out of bed at 5 a.m. for nearly 20 years as a public school teacher in the Washington suburbs. She says her head hurts, her feet hurt, call her tomorrow and probably something else will hurt.

No question that she has earned a sojourn in the recliner in which she sits — accepting congratulations, toasting her good fortune.

How good a job did she do all these years? Several of her current students are there, trying not to eat too many grape leaves. That speaks for itself.

But after I plant a big kiss on her cheek, she says that she isn’t about to fade off to Florida or to obsolescence. She’s seriously considering starting a new career.

You could have knocked me over with her last pay stub.

“I’m going to sound like every silly women’s magazine,” I warned her, “but good grief, haven’t you earned the right to kick back and smell the roses? You don’t need the money. Wouldn’t you rather give the alarm clock to Goodwill and putter for a while?”

My friend (age 69) says no. She knows herself better than I know her, clearly.

She says she still has tons to give. So she will find a way to give it to people who are not teenagers.

“I’m thinking of working for a hospice,” she said. “Managing their staff, helping with new patients, that kind of thing. I need to feel useful. I need to feel wanted.”

Is she an outlier? I don’t think she is. What’s my evidence? Three other people I met at the same party.

All are women in their late 60s. All used to work with my friend. All retired from the school system a year ago. All went on to new careers immediately, for the same reasons my friend cited.

Jackie tells me that she left the school system on a Friday, and began work the following Monday as a mid-level executive at a hospital.

“I manage scheduling for nurses, I order supplies, I do whatever needs doing,” she said. “I know it’s kind of like proving a negative, but if I didn’t do a good job, the entire system would be worse.”

Over near the hummus is a woman named Isabel. She still has the accent of her native Iran. She tells me that her family wanted her to move back to that country once she was done with all those surly American adolescents. But no. She now serves as an executive recruiter.

“I specialize in the educational world, because that’s what I know best,” she tells me. “It’s very satisfying to find the right person for a job. It’s kind of like doing a, what do you call it, a jigsaw puzzle. I’m feeling very fulfilled.”

Marjorie is outside on the patio. She says she didn’t “bump” into a new career right away.

“I took the first summer off,” she said. “But it’s like you always hear. I started to hear my footsteps. I started to hear the clock tick. I knew I needed to find something.”

She has. She now works 40 hours a week as the office manager at a physician’s practice.

She makes sure that all the bills are paid. She says she even enjoys the patients — “and some of them are not very enjoyable.”

I’m delighted for these women, and even more delighted to see an old theory of mine vindicated.

I have always felt that experience is the single most important attribute anyone can bring to any job. That isn’t a slam on 20-somethings. Yes, they need jobs. Yes, they could probably do just fine at a hospital, an executive search firm or a doctor’s office.

But look, please, at what the marketplace is saying:

Women in their late 60s are being hired because they are senior citizens, not despite that.

Bear in mind that none of these women had any direct experience in the industries that now employ them. What they knew was how to get the best out of themselves every day, in an often chaotic environment.

If you think it’s easy to handle dozens of kids in a public school, well, you’d better have some more of that very good French wine.

How long will these newly employed women stay with it? As long as they can keep making a difference, they all said.

Three of them are proving that the market is not looking for a perfect fit when a job opens up. It is looking for people who are flexible, who can work in groups, and who can solve problems.

Very soon these three former teachers will be joined by a fourth. Once her head and her feet stop hurting.

Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.