DO NOT TAKE RETIREMENT LIGHTLY: PUBLISHED IN TWO NEWSPAPERS

RETIREMENT IS NOT TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY

789 WORDS

ROBERT ISENBERG

DECEMBER 12, 2014

I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life. I’ve counted cars in downtown Boston during a blizzard. I tried to sell encyclopedias after school.

I’ve been a waiter. I’ve been a bartender. I’ve even been a cook.

I worked for people I didn’t like. I’ve worked for people who didn’t like me.

 I started a business when I was in my early twenties called Robert’s Fairly Famous Roast Beef Sandwiches. It serviced three singles bars in down town Manhattan. It had its moments.

 Not too long ago my wife Dana and I sold our business called Right Stuff. Right Stuff had two offices. One in Shanghai and one in Burlington, Mass. We serviced companies like Walmart, Stride Rite, and Carter’s. “Moments” would have been welcomed. None of these jobs or business’s were easy. They all came with issues. The harder I worked, the longer the moments.

  But none of these “issues” come even close to the issue of retirement. Retirement is a full time job and then some. Retirement requires focus just as the previous jobs did. The problem is, I find it impossible to focus. I’m never sure, if I should be reading the Wall Street Journal or folding my socks. Both take total concentration. The WSJ is jammed packed with valuable information. It even has amusing little essays regarding everything you never thought of before you read the essay. It reviews movies, books, plays and reviews other things you never thought of. Why then does it put me to sleep?

  Socks are a whole other issue. They really don’t come out of the dryer matching. When they went in they matched. However, In my retirement, I’ve come up with a cure for non matching socks. Who cares? Nobody will see them anyway. They are safely hidden under your pants.

  I know that it’s important to stay busy. I’ve read article after article about the importance of that. “Keeping busy keeps the mind fertile.”  “Fertile?” That might explain unwanted growths.

  These never-ending retirement advisers also say, “Take the time to do tasks that you have put off for years ” That’s an easy one for me. It’s clutter! I know, I’ll get to those magazines that have been piling up for years. I address one pile. The first magazine I pick up is a Vanity Fair. The cover has a picture of Charleze Theron in a bikini. It also headlines an article called “The Friction Between Clinton and Gore.” I check the date, December 2000. ”That’s not so long ago.” It goes back in the pile. I thumb through a New Yorker dated January 16, 2012. “That’s practically yesterday,” I muse. It also gets dropped back in the pile.

   I then decide to go through my clothes. I go in my closet and take out a suit I designed in Taiwan. I think, “That’s a long time ago.” I put it on. It fits. I show Dana, “I’m going to give away some clothes. Dana looks at the suit. “Perfect,” she says, “Not that one.”

  I’ve retired, but not totally. I work on my stories for writer’s group and two newspapers every week. There is very bad chemistry between my computer and me. My computer has attitude! I realize the computer is far more intelligent than me. It can spell better. It remembers the rules of grammar better than I do. What I can’t forgive is it’s arrogance. When I misspell a word and go to spell check it frequently says, “Perhaps if you got closer to the correct spelling of the word, I could help you.” Yesterday when I left my article on the computer to stop for a bite, my computer changed an entire paragraph. What’s worse it left a note, “If you are attending writer’s group this week, they will be surprised and pleased with how smoothly this paragraph flows now.”

   Then there is the computer language. Words that used to have meaning to me, such as Server! File! Desk top! Folder! Cloud!   Before I retired, I knew what those words meant. They were actually visible.

  Recently I asked Dana if she had noticed that people who used to speak clearly were mumbling. Dana asked, “ Did you ever notice the hearing aid office down town?”

 “My response was, “What?”

  We went together. My first reaction was that the aids were too small. Elderly people will misplace them and then not be able to see them. The batteries were teeny weeny. All I could think was they could be mistaken for pills. If I swallowed them, I could hear Dana saying, “ I always told you to listen to your inner voice.”

  Retirement is not to be taken lightly.  I’m just getting started.

I hope.