I have been retired for about four months. In that time, I’ve been to the periodontist, the emergency room, three trips to two different dentists, and I have an appointment with a cardiologist. I had no idea Medicare would make me so popular.
All the implements of modern diagnostic medicine. I’m never sure if they are finding things wrong with me and saving my life or following a practiced choreographed script to keep me perpetually on edge, and worried about my future, if I even have a future. Science, sadism, and Santa Claus all wrapped up together. Mostly, they seem nice, considerate, but the practiced efficiency and steely gaze send a cold sweat down my spine.
These are the things you must consider when planning for retirement. Another problem is mail. It comes in bales. Medicare is a government program that has been opened for bids from every insurance company with enough cash to turn it into a money-making machine. They send out fliers, flashy envelopes filled with vague promises of fantastic, unbelievable savings. Prescription drugs for a song, hate co-pays, no worries, dancing doctors, physician’s assistants delivering mimosas and canapés to the exam room, for the cultured and elite who know what a canape is. We opted for a plan that will keep us alive, we hope, and provide enough coverage we can afford to eat, we hope. Oh, God, what do I do?
Under the burden of such enormous, consequential choices I began to wither, melt into the cushions of my easy chair.
In self-defense, I got a job. A store associate at Big Lots. “Live Big, Save Lots.”
It’s part-time, but it has many benefits, none of which I remember right now. Knowing they’re available for the asking is enough. It adds a little hop to my step, a little sunshine to the clouds of aging in America.
I can walk to work, and enjoy a little fresh air, and the soft, pleasing sounds of speeding traffic as it barrels past me. There is something refreshing about exhaust fumes, the anger of horns screaming at each other, primitive beasts bellowing a challenge.
“This corner is mine, and I refuse to slow down for an SUV.”
“I will see you in hell, or at least at the stop light by the Longhorn Steakhouse, damn you.”
It’s the holiday spirit, translated into the Morse Code of automotive electronics. Sometimes, during particularly touching exchanges of beeps and honks, I have shed a tear, it runs down my cheek, onto the sidewalk, stained with the droppings of the flocks of geese who have moved into the area. There are several large ponds scattered around the apartment buildings, and an abandoned, fallow cornfield across the street. The geese travel back and forth between the two. Normally they walk, fouling traffic, horns blow, geese stop and honk back, it turns into a standoff. Another group of illegal aliens invading an apartment complex and spreading terror and filth. It used to be such a nice neighborhood.
One night, walking home, after an evening shift, I took the turn onto the road through the neighborhood, it’s a little longer, but it has a sidewalk and the traffic is lighter, and slower. As I rounded the bend toward the long, straighter portion of the walk, most of it downhill, things were looking up. There is no greater feeling than being off work, and halfway home. The temperature was in the middle forties and the air was clean and crisp, the stars winked and smiled, Wooly Bully, by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs was playing through the earbuds.
“Wooly bully,
Watch it now, watch it,
Here he comes
Here he comes
Watch it now, he getcha.”
Life was good, for a few wonderful seconds. Waiting, right in the middle of the sidewalk, about a hundred feet in front of me, stood a deer, he was eating, but while I was wondering what to do, he raised his head, staring straight right at me. He had antlers, and stood, defiantly, matching my stare. I couldn’t see him well, but I knew he wasn’t blinking. His look, what I could see of it, was of ownership, defiance. On one side of our neighborhood is a metro park, and there are several wooded ravines running through the area, deer, raccoons, turkeys, and foxes travel through the yards and down the streets often. But they usually don’t engage in a standoff.
Not knowing what to do I crossed the street, and kept my eye on the antlered deer, who kept an eye on me. He probably wondered why I was walking backwards down the street on such a pleasant evening. Now that I think about it, so do I. Most of the wildlife in the area is almost domesticated, maybe not docile, but I haven’t heard of a deer goring evening strollers, and don’t want to be the first.
Being retired is not difficult, I haven’t been doing it long, but I haven’t found anything difficult about it yet. However, I’m starting a road map for the newbies, the grizzled veterans, and those children who haven’t made it yet.
—
This Post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: iStock
